IS there room for a fourth home console?

Or you could just get an XBox 360.

If someone wants a budget console, and goes to Best Buy and sees the XBox 360, PS3, and Wii, each with hundreds of quality games they know about (Mario, Zelda, Halo, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Madden).... and then some other console they've never heard of - for the same price and advertising the same processing power, but with a half dozen games they've never heard of - which will they choose?

This console would have to offer something extraordinary. It won't be games that are better than the competition, that's for sure. Will it be some amazing control scheme? I doubt it.

What will this cheap machine with no developer support and no existing installed base or game library offer? What's going to make the guy looking at these four consoles choose this new one?

I think people are just getting tired of waiting so long for a new console. This is the longest it has been between generations yet, by far. And the only next gen console announced so far doesn't look too promising in the higher power/innovation department, unexciting people further.

The current gen is really pretty impressive in the graphics department. It's not like every generation up to this point where every 4-5 years we had an enormous leap in how things look on screen. Now it's 6, 7, 8 years and a brand new console would produce graphics that look largely like what we're used to.

Right, which is why only Nintendo has announced a new console. Microsoft and Sony still see a lot of life left in their current consoles. In fact, it was a Sony exec who recently said that a new console would only be announced when there can be a significant enough leap graphics-wise to do so.

Although Square and Crytek have both claimed that they can make such a leap now.