Definitely looking forward to 6.0. It sounds like a promising alternative. From your description it sounds like you would intend that the basic commands (pause, play, mute, volume, channel, etc.) would be hard button only with no need to look at the UI. Do I understand that right? If so, definitely on the right track.
I have spoken with some friends with experience about the piece of hardware I described. Similar feedback you gave - I need to be prepared to drop $50k - $100k to get through design and prototype for something that is decent and can be manufactured. Obviously I’d have to look at this as a business and not a hobby effort. No specific desire to do this, but there may be a market.
I think the only issue with the game controller is WAF. Women aren’t likely going to find that very appealing. I don’t do this for a living, but I try to make my system usable by my wife and guests to the extent that they can “just use it” without much learning curve. For example, I have a guest room with a TV in the room and that’s it. All of the sources are in a central media closet and the guest room TV is connected via a HDMI matrix switch. I wouldn’t want to explain Simple Control or a game controller to a guest. For now I just limit them to watching DirevcTV and they have a DirecTV remote. But with a more integrated remote they could watch Roku, AppleTV, BRD, PC, etc. I think any consumer home automation product has to consider things like this to make adoption as wide as possible.
I am not a Control4 fan since they are so into vendor lock-in and custom programming, but they do have a nice remote. Though I think they went too far. Get rid of the LCD screen. Not needed. That’s what the app should be for and this is where Simple Control wins big. I’d also kill some of the buttons, but in general it is pretty streamlined, in the right shape, passable ergonomics, and a familiar form factor to non-technical people / people unfamiliar with the system.
In any case, it sounds like you guys are thinking about it, and I look forward to the coming development. And, yeah, it would still be great to see API enhancements for more technical folks like me.
Thank you.