To be clear - the ISE (powershell_ise.exe) doesn't support interactive console apps. powershell.exe supports them just fine.

Yes I see you are right, thanks for the clarification. The base Powershell.exe with a better window wrapper like cmdr actually should make a nice combination.

It's really too bad the limitation on the nicer ISE though. It does make a bad first impression coming from Linux, when trying to compile and run a simple interactive console app, trying to use ISE as a cmd.exe replacement.