What If...Cryptocurrency Based Gaming Console, a Cryptoconsole

This is one of my favorite things to write. What if articles. My first one for Steemit is a gaming console based on cryptocurrency. I know, you are probably thinking this would never work but read on and see if I cannot change your mind by the end of the article.

First of all, gaming consoles are stupid powerful today. That is great news. Companies are always trying to find ways to recoup money on their investment, beyond just selling more games to fans. If a console manufacturer were to setup the console to "mine" a cryptocurrency by default (say something "easier" than Bitcoin) then they could recoup their costs. Now, you may be thinking, that is a rip off to the owner that is paying the electric bill and getting nothing. Not so. Consoles are tied to an online store nowadays where companies sell games. This cryptoconsole would split the earnings with the console owner (just for fun, lets say 70/30 in favor of the console owner). Each day the earnings would be deposited into the console owners store account where they could purchase games, clothing, whatever is available in the store (coupled with the on record payment method for purchases that exceed the available earnings).

This would bring in additional income to companies like Sony or Microsoft who collectively have reportedly sold 4.29 million units worldwide as of January 2017 according to VGCharts.com (heavily favoring the Playstation brand).

That is 4.29 million consoles that could potentially be mining a cryptocurrency for both the manufacturer and the console owner.

To help push more sales, manufacturers could even take a bigger hit on the introductory cost of the console, knowing they will recoup that money and more with the rising value in cryptocurrency. Since the manufacturer would know they would be getting a cut of the mined cryptocurrency (and only have to trade other digital goods via the online store) they could lower the cost of the console accordingly. This would result in more units sold and more mined cryptocurrency in the hands of users and companies.

How would any one single cryptocurrency fare if it had an influx of 4.29+ million new miners/users? The value would surely go up, possibly stabilizing more along the way too. It would be a win/win. Of course, the manufacturer would be able to change, within the hardware restrictions, to different cryptocurrencies based on value and difficulty to mine.

You may be thinking, mining is intensive and would severely limit usage of the machine for what it was meant to do - play games. You are right. That is why mining would occur when the machine was idle (such as while the owner was at work or at school or asleep). There could also be user settings that could tweak mining based on power consumption, available time to mine, etc. This would keep users from being frustrated over their new $400+ paperweight.