Talk:Microconsole

Dubious

Re Microconsole Being Produced "At A Loss"

This information sourced from The Verge is not "supported by independent sources".

Articles should cite sources whenever possible. While we cannot check the accuracy of cited sources, we can check whether they have been published by a reputable publication and whether independent sources have supported them on review. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

–Raymond Keller (talk) 16:39, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@Raymond Keller, "supported by independent sources" means that a portion of our WP article is cited to a reliable, independent source. The portion you removed was cited to The Verge, which is an example of such a reliable, independent source. Per BRD, you're supposed to discuss your proposed change here before reverting my revert. czar ♔ 16:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@Czar, sorry to seem reverty. I should have discussed before making that last change. I'll explain why I didn't think I was revert warring: There were two distinct changes in my original edit. The first was removal of information that I felt was more appropriate to the company's main article — for style. I reverted the portion that I did not believe was being contested. The second change was removal of poorly sourced information. I left this contested portion and applied the dubious template. My mistake to mix the two.

Regarding the contested information, I believe the information was inappropriately sourced. I'm reading the policy regarding "not supported by independent sources" like so:

Articles should cite sources whenever possible. While we cannot check the accuracy of cited sources, we can check whether they have been published by a reputable publication and whether independent sources have supported them on review. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

(Emphasis mine.) The antecedent for "they" and "them" appears to me to be "cited sources", not "cited material". And since the legitimacy of sources is an important and central issue, directly addressed by WP:VERIFIABILITY, I took the above quote from the WP policy regarding verifiability to be speaking to just that, to the legitimacy of sources. Given it means what I think, I might still have made a faux pas — Maybe I should be contesting before removing.

If I'm interpreting policy right, it's okay to contest the material and legitimacy of its source, and have fact checking done to see if the source "[has] been published by a reputable publication and whether independent sources have supported them".

–Raymond Keller (talk) 18:44, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

It's fine to contest whether a source got a fact right, but The Verge is already known to be a reliable source with an editorial policy and whatnot. If you have another reliable source that shows that fact to be misrepresented or wrong, we can discuss it that way, but to question The Verge's reliability on Wikipedia as a whole would have to be run by WP:RSN since it affects more than this article. Otherwise, that source is fine as long as it's paraphrased properly. czar ♔ 20:16, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh no, no, no — please don't take me as suggesting that the Verge is an unreliable source. From what I understand, Wikipedia recognizes three kinds of source:

• the piece of work itself (the article, book)
• the creator of the work (the writer, journalist)
• the publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press)

I'm referring to the article (and perhaps the author by extension), not the publisher. I was hoping that the fact that the particular assertion was not "supported by independent sources upon review" would be considered to invalidate the source article's assertion, as is implied by the above-quoted WP:VER text. Do you disagree? Is an assertion in a source article only invalid if it's contradicted by a different source article?

—Raymond Keller (talk) 00:43, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

By our working definition of an independent, secondary source, if we trust The Verge, we trust a claim made within its reporting, yes. Why wouldn't we? Without knowing its context, that portion cited above appears to be about how to determine whether a source is reliable, not the claims within a source. It means that the way that we find whether The Verge is reliable is partly on how other sources trust the outlet's reporting. czar ♔ 02:07, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course trusting a publisher implies trusting an article from that publisher and such an article's claims — what else would it mean to trust a publisher? I'm with you on that. I do want to make sure that we stay clear on the distinction between source meaning publisher and source meaning article. "Source", again, means either of those things (or even author). The above quote, from Wikipedia:List of policies, talks about the validity of an article. Judging the validity of an article involves judging both its publisher (and possibly the particular author) and whether independent sources have supported them. Meaning that the validity of a source article depends not just on source publisher, but also whether other potential source articles support our source article of question.

So the questions are really: What is meant by "support"? And how do we use that in our judgement? I take it to mean generally "agrees with". Clearly, if another article from a reputable publisher contradicts an assertion from our source article of question there's lack of support or even the presence of opposition. If no other article in the world confirms a particular assertion, if there's a lack of confirmation, you could call that a lack of support. That wouldn't, however, I'd say, constitute opposition. The assumption I'd been working under is that this lack of confirmation qualified as a lack of "whether independent sources have supported", as is a criterion in the WP:V analysis. On reflection, this must be wrong.

Looking at it practically, a lack of confirmation would be much too restrictive. There'd be many cases when a reputable publisher published accurate but exclusive information and it wouldn't be usable. Wikipedia would be much poorer for it. So, it doesn't make sense. My assumption had been a bad one.

From the other side, however, if a reputable publisher publishes inaccurate information as an exclusive, Wikipedia can do nothing but republish that false information. I believe that's what's happened in this case; I have information (that can't be used as a Wikipedia source) that opposes a number of assertions in the Verge article. Well, there you have it. Nothing to be done here.

Thanks for taking the time to discuss the matter with me, and civilly.

–Raymond Keller (talk) 21:31, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

No problem. You may be interested in this article about how our job is to present the sources and not necessarily to find the truth. On your read of the quoted text about WP:V, I think the common interpretation is that we do not fact-check individual references, though we can decide whether that source generally has a trusted reputation. czar ♔ 01:15, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Categories

If a Wikipedia page has its own category, it is generally expected to be in this category too. For example, Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita have their own categories Category:Nintendo 3DS and Category:PlayStation Vita, so they have these categories in their pages. --Cartakes (talk) 15:35, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

You can also check Handheld game console, which belongs to Category:Handheld game consoles and not Category:Video game consoles (but Category:Handheld game consoles in turn belongs to Category:Video game consoles). So it is already inconsistent by now as you see. --Cartakes (talk) 15:35, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Steam machines

The Alienware steam machine could be re-mentioned (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Microconsole&oldid=686979493 ). I agree it's just one steam machine, but currently there are none mentioned, and it seems to be the most popular one anyway, so it deserves a mention KVDP (talk) 18:20, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

It's not a microconsole, so there's no reason it should be mentioned here. -- ferret (talk) 18:27, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Examples of microconsole specifications

Extended content

Main article: List of microconsoles Name Manufacturer Release date OS System-on-chip used CPU GPU Physical Media support Notes Amazon Fire TV Amazon.com April 2, 2014 Fire OS Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T quad-core Qualcomm Krait 300 Qualcomm Adreno 320 No GamePop BlueStacks TBA 2015 Android 4.2 Unreleased specs No Subscription-based GameStick PlayJam October 29, 2013 Android 4.2 Amlogic 8726-MX ARM Cortex A9 Mali-400 MP No MOJO Mad Catz December 10, 2013 Android 4.2.2 Tegra 4 1.8 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 Nvidia 72-Core No Nexus Player Google & Asus November 3, 2014 Android TV (Android 5.0-based) 1.8 GHz quad-core Intel Atom Imagination PowerVR Series 6 No FunBox ZTE & The9 March 19, 2014 Android 4.3 Tegra 4 1.8 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 Nvidia 72-Core No Ouya Ouya Inc. (formerly Boxer8) June 25, 2013 Android 4.1 Tegra 3 1.7 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 Nvidia 12-Core 520 MHz No PlayStation TV Sony Computer Entertainment November 14, 2013 PSVita OS quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore PowerVR SGX543MP4+ Yes, many physical Vita games are compatible A home console version of PlayStation Vita Pandora TV-Box L.C. Smart 2013 Android 4.1.1 RK3066 1.6 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Mali-400 MP4 No Xtreamer Multi-Console Unicorn Information Systems January 2014 Android 4.2.2 RK3188 1.6 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 Mali-400 MP4 No T2 TCL April 9, 2014 Android 4.2.2 A31 quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 PowerVR SGX544 MP2 No TIMEBOX TIMEBOX October 28, 2014 Android 4.4 Amlogic M802 1.6 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 Mali-450 MP GPU 600 MHz 8-Core No G-BOX Geeya November 15, 2014 Android 4.4 RK3288 1.6 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A17 Mali-T764 No Forge TV Razer May 5, 2015 Android TV (Android 5.0-based) Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 quad-core Krait 450 CPU - 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Adreno 420 GPU No Shield Console Nvidia May 28, 2015 Android TV (Android 5.0-based) Tegra X1 ARMv8 ARM Cortex-A57 quad-core + ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core (64-bit) 256-core Nvidia Maxwell-based GPU No

This list goes into far too granular detail for this article. Anything necessary to include in a list can be enumerated at List of microconsoles (if that separate list is even needed...) czar 23:32, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Not a problem from me, I was simply undoing a recent spate of edits that had no explanation and didn't seem the right way to go about things to me. -- ferret (talk) 23:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Add a picture of the NES/SNES mini

Some of the most relevant "microconsoles" of today are the NES mini and Super NES Classic Edition.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NCM_Konsole_mit_Controller.jpg

104.228.101.152 (talk) 21:22, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

A point to support my claim - the NES mini and Super NES Classic Edition both emulate games, as do Android-based platforms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.228.101.152 (talk) 15:18, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Major reorganization of video game console articles

I'm proposing a reorganization of several articles that will include or may impact this one that I've outlined at Talk:Video game console#Massive reorganization of several articles proposed and would like input there. --Masem (t) 19:56, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Atari VCS

Should the Atari VCS (2021 console) get a mention? Doremon764 (talk) 21:33, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

No, because it's not really a microconsole, and shouldn't be called one at its own article. oknazevad (talk) 22:40, 14 November 2022 (UTC)