Envizions Computer Entertainment, Inc. has announced the upcoming production of an expensive gaming console that will bring both Google Android and notable computing power to televisions everywhere. However, it comes at a notable price—with a cost of $249 a pop, it really needs to sport more than an offer of being an Android-based game console.

It’s called the EVO 2 and developers can reserve a unit right now for $15, but I’m not going to hold my breath when it comes to it making a dent in the market. Still, a device like this may help show the power of Android when it comes to becoming a bridge connectivity device between mobile gaming and home gaming,

Digital Trends picked up the press release for this device and looked through its offerings for us,

A press release reveals that the console, which will retail for $249, contains a Samsung 1.2 GHz processor, 512 MB of DDR2 memory and a modified Android 2.2 operating system. The package will also include an EVO TV remote, a game controller and an HDMI cable, which is one more HDMI cable than any of the other currently available gaming consoles pack into the box. The company welcomes early adopters to step up and put down a pre-order, at the Envizions online store.

The EVO 2 is the first of its kind, a dedicated console that ports the mobile gaming experience to your TV. There will apparently be some kind of system in place by which players can earn points which can be converted (somehow) to EVO tokens. These tokens are then used to purchase “premium Android games [for] free.” The console will also ship with “game cloud storage” and the company’s Qquip SMS blogging reward service… whatever that is. Envizions also plans to add a 3D motion sensor later in the year.

The first thing I noticed about the product description of the EVO 2 is the introduction that it’s a cloud gaming console. Although it looks like all it will ship with is some sort of cloud storage for games (allowing the console to run with less memory/harddrive) this could be the beginning of thin-client gaming that hook into elastic cloud gaming services to deliver games similar to mobile gaming rather than through DVDs.

We’ve already seen this trend with cloud-gaming platforms like OnLive and lurking behind the silver lining of Happy Cloud, which provides a very similar service (although it’s designed to speed up playing the game as it downloads.) Even Akamai has been in on this game by providing their powerful cloud-based delivery system for video game downloads, all they’d have to do is hook into EVO 2’s new marketshare and deliver video games as media and viola thin-client gaming with elastic cloud enabled ahoy.

Of course, users of this console who opted to go the cloud-route and eshew external local storage would suffer terribly at the hands of something similar to the PlayStation Network outage (even for single-player games) as thunderstorms roll themselves through the cloud even with umbrellas supplied by big players like Akamai.

Another interesting angle for devices like this is the fact that the console runs Android 2.2 and it’s designed to be aware of other mobile Android devices nearby along with being Wi-Fi capable. It’s basically a set-top box with delusions of gaming grandeur at this point that wants to bridge the gap between mobile and console. The specs boast high connectivity between smartphones and tablets and the ability to stream media from in-home PCs. That puts its squarely in competition with devices like Boxee and Roku.

The Real Power Rests in the Personal-Cloud

More and more, smartphones and mobile will allow people to carry their media with them through access to the personal cloud. Imagine, coming to your friend’s house who happens to be running a device like the EVO 2, getting permissions for their set-top device to talk to your Android smartphone, and it therefore gains access to your personal cloud of music, movies, games and etc. through various services. Suddenly, your presence in the home means that you can play Dead or Alive Cloud-Edition with your friend, using your smartphone as a controller (or whatever is popular at the moment.)

In fact, imagine a smartphone a lot like the Experia PLAY that could do this for you.

Gaming companies may jump at the chance to tether their games to individuals and permit them to carry them around place to place to engage in greater gaming opportunities if they weren’t tied down to an individual console in their home. Social gaming can be seen as more than just a social media concept, but a coming together between friends in front of a large screen to get the job done.

The EVO 2 may be a little ahead of its time in this market and thus will probably suffer poor adoption; but it could spur the notice of gaming companies, consoles, and services to realize there’s an untapped niche here in deep need of filling.