On the topic of small consoles, what about Wii? Sure, the PS3 and XBOX 360 make mincemeat of the word 'slim', but the Wii is extremely compact. How does Wii compare to PCE size wise?
The unit itself is much bigger than a PCE, but much smaller than a PCE+IFU+CDROM. Unless I'm forgetting something is the smallest system with a full sized optical drive built in.
Wait, strike that, the CD-X is smaller, slightly.
The Wii also has four controller ports and two memory cars slots (for Cube compatibility) in addition to an SD card slot, two USB sockets, AV, power, and sensor bar jacks. Packaging wise, its f*cking brilliant. Despite its "child-like" image/market it makes more money for its creators than the competition could even dream of, which makes me wonder why Sony and MS are so eager to run each other into the ground making gigantic, expensive, unreliable loss-leading refrigerator-sized bricks. I mean, MS has now made two systems that were each "superior" to what Nintendo was selling at the same time, but they are, IIRC, something like 10 BILLION USD in the hole on the whole "XBox" venture overall. Sony seems to fail more fantastically the more powerful the systems get. To me its painfully obvious they are headed in the wrong direction.
These guys, basically:
