I agree too. It seems that they want to give to PS2 what the Xbox have or can be easyly modified to have. Good thinking I guess. The style seems to flirt with the htpc (home theater PC) market that want a small multifunction box sitting unnoticed among the other media equipment. But the style may change until when we see it in our markets.
Could work, but it may be a little too late with so few to none amazing new features. Just what the PS2 should have been from start. A neccessary upgrade but nothing revolutionary.
But until the market ships out excellent hardware with excellent software for Home Teater, TV, Music, Games, Internet, Photos etc., all in one box and easy to use at affordable prices, then the do-it-yourself market mainly based on PC systems will be untouched and the game consoles will mainly be just game consoles.
I think PS3 and XBOX 2 also will have a hard time to be more than the super-game machines they are. To move to high-end home multimeda multifunctions centers it takes a different multipurpose hardware and OS system that will take time to develop. Microsoft will try hard on the PC platform (Media Center)and there is alot of other great projects like myHTPC (
www.myhtpc.net) that are in the frontline and will make the PC rule this for years to come.
That's my theories...