I wouldn’t call a Raspberry Pi + a load of emulation and builtin, bloated garbage a “retro game console”. It’s only pretend.
Anyway, it’s unlikely to be “the Itch.io console”, because each developer has different graphics, audio, CPU targets. If you try to account for all of them, you’ll end up with what is just a worse PC. Nothing’s stopping you from inventing your own hardware with your own limitations, though, since limitations are half the fun.
I would call it a game console considering it's a computer with an OS designed specificly to play retro games with a game controller. Somehow it's not a real console because the code runs different? That's like saying Apple Macintoshs arn't real computers because it doesn't run windows.
But it's the whole point of a console to have one targeted platform instead of many.
It’s not a real console because it involves emulation. Much in the same way that the NES, SNES, N64 & GC emulators in the Wii were together called the “virtual console” and not grouped together with the Wii in name.
If I make RetroArch start fullscreen on boot on my PC, can I call that a game console? No, it’s a PC with an emulator. Your scenario is no different, other than it being a Raspberry Pi.
But it’s the whole point of a console to have one targeted platform instead of many.
I did not say target platform. I was talking about individual subsystems. If you cater to all of them, you will end up with a PC-incompatible PC clone. So, since you cannot cater to all of them, you cannot expect more than a very minute amount of developers to target your console as a whole. Hence, you cannot call it “the Itch.io console”.
