Hi Robertb
Have you heard about the Open Pandora project?
http://openpandora.org/
Look what can be done when you listen to the community and design a device exactly to their specifications.
Pandora folks have designed a portable game console to the exact specifications of the community. The device was created with the maximum emphasis on the openness. There are already dozens of emulators and hundreds of games and utilities ported for this platform.
Then they commissioned production of several thousand units. The first batch sold out (in pre-order) in a few hours and eager buyers have crashed the server.
Open Pandora folks did not start from zero. Previously they were centered around GP2X console (no longer in production)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X