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Nokia's Linux Based Xbox Competitor
Gerhard F writes: "FinancialTimes reports 'Nokia to use Linux system.' 'MediaTerminal will compete against Microsoft's Xbox video game
console and UltimateTV digital TV recorder.'
'We have made the hardware an open design so anyone else can
make a clone or compatible product,' said Mr Nelger. "We would
rather have a small part of a large market than a large part of
a small market if we had used proprietary technologies.'" I'll believe it when the vapor dissipates, but here's hopin'.
http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/mediaterminal.html
http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/tech_specs.html
The specifications are preliminary. Celeron 366 or
faster seems to be specified. Probably it is quite
a lot faster once it gets out. IIRC, XBox specs
have been upgraded during its development.
Also, Nokia was recruiting/trying to recruit people from game industry a year ago; a friend of mine interviewed there (having been a lead game programmer... ended up joining a 'real' games company instead). So, this has been in making for a while (not that I knew it'd be linux-based).
Finally, perhaps their WAP adventures have taught them something about making networked applications (games)... There is hoping. And since they have strong expertise on UI/appliance design, at least they have something to bring to game consoles, even if they don't really develop games themselves (whereas Microsoft, for example, owns a few decent game producers).
I work as a developer on the project and therefore have pretty good knowledge about it. The hardware is mostly standard PC hardware with some custom bits for the digital tv stuff. If you want to know more about the software in the box, take a look at the fresh developer community site at: http://www.ostdev.net
At some point, a 3D scene has to be converted to 2D to display on your monitor. One part of the graphics pipeline that enables this is a Perspective Projection. Basically, a projection is a transformation that moves from a k-dimensional space to a k-1 dimensional space. What can get fucked up when this happens is the texture mapping on objects in the scene. When you do the (interpolated) texture mapping in image space rather than scene/world space, it turns out to look a lot better. I'm not sure what they really mean by "perspective corrected" though.
Mip-Mapping is a different type of texture mapping. If you want more info on this, go to some graphics dev sites that talk about it. It's pretty standard stuff
A method for determining the colors on a polygon by linearly interpolating (weighting) certain pre-specified colors (such as those at the vertices of the polygon). Again, standard stuff
Method for handling transparency by blending together layers of generated images together with specified opacity (alpha) values. More standard stuff
Well, fog. Not sure what they mean by it being able to handle fogging though.
The standard method used by graphics accelerators to draw stuff in the scene. Basically, when you draw stuff, you only want to draw the stuff closest to the camera, because the other stuff behind the closest stuff is blocked.
3D graphics libraries such as OpenGL and Direct3D, but ones for Linux instead of Windows.
I don't see anything very special about the above features... It's pretty standard stuff that you'd want to see in a GeForce 2 or so nowadays. If it's not all hardware-implemented, it's not impressive at all.
I don't see anything really awesome like Vertex and Pixel Shaders, along with the other new features that are implemented by the GeForce 3 / XGPU in hardware...
I'm sure I made a mistake above.. Maybe someone else can correct me.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Is Tivo sold at a loss? Sure, this is true of consoles, but this seems more like an appliance of sorts, no?
Nokia Launches Independent Website to Support Open Source Developers. From the article: "Nokia (NYSE:NOK) today announced the launch of a new website, ostdev.net, dedicated to supporting developers in the open source community as well as the promotion of collaborative development of the OST."
What dose GSM service cost in Finland ?
How many providers do you have? As of 3 weeks ago Jamaica has 1 GSM service provider and a competitor with Landline and TDMA networks. This whole telecoms competition is a new thing for us and I was just wondering how low the prices can get.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
You do not have to wait for 3G. GPRS will deliver pretty good always-on general-purpose Internet access for GSM and IS136 (used by AT&T in the U.S.). This will drive replacement of existing handsets, for, probably, at least two subsequent product generations. Mix in EDGE, which doubles GSM and IS136 capacity, and you can wait quite a while before needing 3G. And this type of mobile access has the potential to support mobile gaming quite well, especially if they can figure out how to do bandwidth prioritization such that low-value apps can be priced flat-rate.
I wrote parts of this stuff
... at least, not to compete with X-Box/PS2/Gamecube/whatever. That market's way too crowded already and Nokia aren't nearly stupid enough to go for it. Maybe far off in the future, if this thing gets enough dev work on it, but certainly not now.
The games they're thinking of are the sorts of things you see on websites or interactive TV - silly but fun Shockwave games, Minesweeper, that kind of thing. It's icing on the cake rather than a major feature drive.
-- Yoz
Is here: www.ostdev.net
It's really nice. TONS of docs about the way the system works. An SDK to download. Some example code. Still some holes (no tutorial up yet) but I'm sure they'll get filled if this thing takes off. The only major omission is the hardware spec.
-- Yoz
Firstly, Indrema was a perfect example of shotgun marketing, absolutely terrible. It's an MP3 player! And a games console! And a chocolate! And a surprise! And a toy! There was no way that thing was going to fly, however good.
Nokia actually know how to build and market consumer products. They have ins with all the major retailers, especially in Europe. Half of the mobile phones over here are Nokias.
Secondly, don't confuse this thing with a games console. Game apps are going to be much more like Shockwave games than Quake 3 - they're aiming at little bits of fun in between TV shows rather than PS2 competition.
-- Yoz
Captain Tacky forgot to mention that Nokia is doing this in partnership with CollabNet, a very cool company based on community development, which also used to operate sourcexchange.
The
press release from Nokia themselves. I really hopes they come out with something good. Think about it if they let anyone play. This might make this the "next big thing" since anyone can use it and make games for it this will allow more games and with more games more people will be likely to buy.
When I first heard the name "MediaTerminal" I was thinking only about DigiTV. However, the product specs already suggested something more than that.. It was far too much for just a set-top box.
l
Go see yourself: http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/mediaterminal.htm
Whatever it really is meant to be, it solves my problems regarding "What kind of computer could I connect to my home stereo/video systems" although I expect that to be pretty expensive.
It's probably Linux because that way they get an OS that doesn't cost a dime (and remember that 10 million units times a couple of bucks means lots in licensing costs), an OS that has the features they need (less manpower needed to write design and write the features), and lastly, an OS that has supporters, meaning there will be more software for the device than Nokia could ever hope to write (or other third party companies would write).
Looking at Nokia, they sell hardware. Not software. So, to them it's not a big deal to give the software away, as their product is the hardware, and the software is pretty useless without hardware.
Also, think about it from the employer viewpoint: You need 20 kernel developers. Is it easier (and cheaper) to get 20 Linux hackers or 20 psOS hackers?
In the end it comes down to usability. If it's easy to use, most people won't care if it's Linux or some proprietary rtos. So the software available from Nokia (the "official" software) must be easy to use.
Remember that there are different divisions in Nokia. Nokia Mobile Phones isn't all that open, but even they're considering the implications of open source.
The MediaTerminal is, I think, produced by some emerging division currently under Nokia Ventures Organization. This means that if it doesn't sell, they'll just drop the issue and count that venture as one of the failures (and they can drop a project at 100s of MEURs deciding it was RnD that went nowhere). However, the new ventures are more open towards open source community.
Regarding Linux and Nokia.. In one open source seminar someone (forgetting names) from Nokia talked about embedded software and open source. They had actually had Linux running on (forgetting details, I think it was ADSL modem) but in that case it wasn't stable enough and they dropped it in favour of some other OS (don't remember which one).
Oh yes, if I remember correctly, MediaScreen was running Linux on some PPC chip. Had quite a lot of flash and RAM, big screen, embedded GSM modem and DVB-T receiver, was video conferensing ready, and so on. I wonder how much that'd had cost should it have made it to retail.. Just a showpiece, though. Of course I don't know if they considered it as a product or a prototype.
If anyone is able to make money mass-producing a piece of consumer electronics targetted at the mass market, Nokia would be it
Remember back when the PS1 came out? I for one was a bit surprised to see Sony release a console, but in 20/20 hindsight it made a lot of sense. They had the experience in producing consumer electronics, and - perhaps more important - marketing it, and getting it out in the stores. A well established brand name certaintly didn't hurt either. Honestly: Did any of you expect Sony to become a major player in the console market, eventually pushing Sega out?
Now consider Nokia. They have a lot of experience designing, producing, marketing and selling consumer electronics in this price range. In fact, they are just about the only major mobile phone manufacturer that has managed to make a profit in the last year, and - let's be honest - it's not because their phones are technologically superior to the phones from - say - Erichson.
The only catch is that the mobile phone market - at least GSM phones - is just about saturated. In Scandinavia, where we have consistently been a few years ahead of the rest of the world in the mobile phone market, almost everyone, including 12 year old school kids, now have a GSM phone.
So far it has seemed like Nokia would gamble on 3G making people switch phones and convergence in PDAs and phones as their future market, but actually a console would make a lot of sense as an alternative revenue stream.
People buy phones for much the same reasons that they buy consoles. Think about it. It's not all about capabillities - it's about design and marketing.
"We would rather have a small part of a large market than a large part of a small market if we had used proprietary technologies."
Honestly.. that must the the most transparent attempt at sucking [in|up to] the open source crowd that I've ever seen.
You could read that as "We're L337! Help the underdog!"
It's not open source that will sell Nokia's game box, it's games. Without a nice library of games in the stores when the console is released, that box will amount to an open source graphics engine.
Trolling is a art,
I doubt it will be vapor. It's not going to die due to lack of funding. Nokia is a big-ass company. It's not like it will cost a lot to develop and make either. Since they're using standard hardware and standard software, it should cost little to develop. I may not ever be huge, but on the scale of a corporation like Nokia, this is a small deal.
http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/tech_specs.html
Nokia is half as big as Sony, or 3/4 big as Intel. Nokia has 60,000 employees, $6B in profits, $4B in the bank, and a popular, well-liked consumer brand. They are capable of pulling it off if anyone is.
Sounds like a great plan to me. Except that using your profits from another industry to fund a below-cost entrance into a new market sounds suspiciously like what people are always getting after Microsoft for doing :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
And your point would be ... ? I don't think you can say that the PC is not a successful game platform, can you?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Nokia is a pretty darned big company doing what it does, but in the US what it doesn't do is a whole lot with computers. It has decent name recognition in cell phones, but its other computer-related offering, monitors, doesn't garner much attention.
Obviously Microsoft is going to spend a bundle on promoting the Xbox. I doubt that even if Nokia came up with a higher performing system they could make any kind of a dent in Microsoft's sales. After all, if performance made a difference, then we'd all be watching Betamax instead of VHS and listening to DAT instead of cassettes.
Marketing is king...name recognition drives marketing and Microsoft has that in spades.
Bummer.
-h-
I don't want to be a spelling nazi here, but I am confused about the origin of the word 'walla' in the above post. I have seen this word used quite a few times recently, and always in a context which makes sense for the French word voila, which is commonly used in English.
Is this an example of poor spelling on the web, or a completely different word? It looks kind of middle-eastern as it is.
Since Slashdot saw fit to post the story they did rather than my submission :-) I'll put the link here:
From The Register: Nokia calls on Linux coders for set-top box apps
Nokia has reiterated that it is turning to the Linux community to ensure that its Media Terminal set-top box, due to be launched later this year, has plenty of applications from the word go.
In particular, it wants games developers to get coding for MT, based around what Nokia is now calling its Open Source Terminal platform.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Yes, of course to some extent they'll get good press because they use Linux (and certainly they make a point of mentioning it because of this). But ultimately it seems like they just want to do something that will get them in the market fast and you'd be hard pressed to find a better choice in that regard.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The direction is increasingly the media and content business.. in the future, Nokia, Microsoft and Sony will compete for the same customers even more than today. The winner is not determined -- but keep this in mind: Nokia is one of the very few companies that has a realistic chance of competing successfully with Microsoft - and vice versa.
So it sounds like it's in the late stages of development at least...
--
Poliglut
Most game consoles are sold for well below their cost of manufacture. The console makers do this so that there is a strong enticement to buy the console. The loss generated by the console sale is compensated by increasing the price of the games: in the long run there is a hefty profit.
This works because most consumers only look at the up-front price rather than the total cost of ownership. A cheap console with expensive games sells better than an expensive console with cheap games, because the entry is so much easier.
An open platform cannot exploit this advantage, so the up-front hardware cost will necessarily be much greater. For this reason, an open console standard is unlikely to succeed.
Don't be niave. This is all part of the Finnish Plot for World Domination.
Next thing you know they'll be buying Starbucks.
Pretty funny acctually.. A game console called cheese. :)
-henrik
Ummm, mods? Can I have a hit of the crack you're smoking this fine day?
-------------
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I noticed, but I finished the thought.
Nokia is a serious company, so i doubt this is vaporware. Nokia is generally very conservative with their money.
the big question is how do they plan to get developers to make games / applications for this device? Nokia has a history of disastrous developer relations. for instance, if you want to develop for a nokia phone, pretty much everything is proprietary or secret or costs tons of money. they would have to change that completely...
Linus is finnish. Nokia is finnish. Linus' mother toungue is swedish. Nokia's web site for open development features a swedish pun. What does this really mean?
I saw one of these things working at the Sydney IT Expo a few weeks ago. So it's definitely well beyond the vapourware stage. However, it's not primarily a game box, so it won't compete with the Xbox in that area.
How to Lobby Politicians http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
Wow... that just sucked. I mean, it really, really, sucked. Seriously, a four year old kid could have responded "NUH UH! big poopy-head!" and sucked less. Dear God, man, did you think before you posted?
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
I appreciate that Nokia has the resources to make this machine (ie fund the dev costs), I just don't figure that they can make a competitive machine to the PS2 or XBox for less than the selling price. If there was indeed a way to do this then I'm sure that Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft would have found it and rolled it out by now.
If they are trying to offset something on the annual report, then I wouldn't bet on this being a successful product at all. It would probably just make it to prototype and then they'll write the whole thing off when the figures don't add up. In that case it is actually bad for Linux as it ends up another high profile failed product/business that is somehow related to Linux or Open Software.
Open Source does not automatically mean no profit, it just means you have to generate profit from something other than the software or SDK. This is currently not how the game industry works and the only other source of revenue would be the sale of the hardware itself, which I doubt could be profitiable in an arena where the average selling price is 60 to 70% of the manufacture cost.
You actually aren't being so theoretical about saving dev costs from "Off the shelf" and Open Source - that's almost the XBox theory (except trade Open Source with 'we already have an OS we can use').
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Good point. Taking a long look at the specs, this seems to basically be a PC type device with a TV as the output device (and all the associated resolution problems), and a highly customised window and input manager.
I seriously doubt it will in any way be a competitor to the XBox or PS2 from the way the specs are reading - the main problem being the lack of a firm hardware specification. It's fine for the applications to have a nice solid API foundation, but console games really require direct access to a well defined set of hardware to work well.
If this is billed as a game console, it will fail. It seems much more like a digital TV box than anything else I can imagine. In that market, it might well work but the end user will probably notice it is running Linux about as much as you notice the OS that the fuel injection system on your car is running. In fact, the only time you would see the OS is either in a splash screen or a kernel panic.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
This is basically a Celeron 366 with a TNT(1) or Voodoo 2 equivalent - standard PC of about 2 years ago. In fact, Nokia could probably pick these up at a second hand shop for less than the money they will sell them for!!
My guess would be that it is using a TNT2m64 on board (they are very cheap), a very cheap RAMDAC (230MHz according to spec) and a CPU that Intel don't even make any more (slowest Celeron for sale is 667MHz @ $69). Probably going to sell in the $100 price range as it will have to seriously undercut the PS2 and XBox to make any sales at all.
I guess you'd get ok frame rates from Quake 2 or earlier, but don't expect any of the latest games to EVER come out on this box - it will be strictly limited to GameBoy style things.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The problem here is almost so obvious that it is being overlooked by most people: this can't work because of the pricing mechanics of the game industry.
In order to produce a product at a competitive price you have to LOSE money on the sale of the hardware to make it up again on either the license fees from software sold or from the SDK. It has been estimated that it will cost Microsoft about $425 for each XBox but they have to sell them at $300 or less for it to sell against the PS2.
Now if Nokia has an open design then no one will clone it because they would have to lose money from the sale of their hardware with no way to get the money back from any sort of licensing, and by using a GPL operating system, Nokia has no practical way of recovering their loss on the sale of the systems. The best they could do is have a binary-only kernel module which they charge software developers to use, which breaks the whole idea of using a GPL system in the first place.
So, by producing an open hardware console with an open hardware system, Nokia (by my reckoning at least - feel free to correct me) are going to be heading down the long road to a failed project. There is simply no way for them to make money, even if they capture the entire market they are only guaranteed to lose money!!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
While I think this is great coming from such a large name such as Nokia, I have consernes about this project going the way of Indreama or that this is an empty promise since it is projecting a very short time line.
Just for the sake that it's true, going open source for the OS and having open architecture is a very nice touch that is sure to attract attention and hackers everywhere. Marketshare will have to depend on who they attract to write games for this system (part of the Indreama's problem).
All in all this sounds great but I will wait to see this thing in cold hard plastic and in a store near me before I start reaching for my wallet.
Even still, I find this to be an odd move for Nokia to try and break into this market suddenly.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
Nokia's pages on the device can be found here:
t ml
http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/mediaterminal.h
I'll quote from the page:
"Imagine the creative potential and flexibility of a product that can swap seamlessly in and out of Internet sites and television channels, while at the same time, recording your favourite television program or playing the latest digital music hits. As a sofa surfer, you can also enjoy interactive gaming, personal emailing and chatting, and via the internal hard drive, the ability to store digital music, movie and photo files. The Nokia Media Terminal offers these exciting choices and much, much more!
The Nokia Media Terminal Offers
Full Internet Access
The Nokia Media Terminal offers sofa surfers full Internet functions such as web browsing, secure on-line shopping or home banking, chat, email, and personal address book storage from the convenience of your TV.
Interactive Digital TV and Multimedia Services
The combination of high-quality digital TV and state-of-the-art Internet technologies enables a wide variety of multimedia services and applications, including: web and interactive games, on-line support portal/web site, electronic program guide and navigation browser.
Personal Video Recorder (PVR) and Multimedia File Storage
Users of the Nokia Media Terminal enjoy the benefits of a personal video recorder, including pause-and-play live TV broadcast, digital video recording, and video-on-demand through streaming video. The Nokia Media Terminal internal hard drive can hold up to approximately 15 hours of recording time or more depending on the streaming video format. Via the internal hard drive, the Nokia Media Terminal can also store digital music, movie and photo files. For additional storage space or file backup capabilities, the Nokia Media Terminal offers local connectivity to an external hard drive."
This isn't meant to be an X-Box killer. This is Tivo meets WebTV. This machine is not even remotely an Indrema and the usual arguments about console gaming economics will not apply. That is not to say there aren't a million reasons why this will turn out to be be vapor but a `lack of games' will not be one of them. Think Trivia as opposed to Quake.
Time to buy stock in Nokia
Just saw this site (powered by CollabNet)
http://www.ostdev.net
This is the main site for Nokia's new machine. Very interesting indeed!
- mod this up please -
Yes it is. But this box isn't meant to compete with full featured game consoles. Many are just happy to be able to play simple games which will run fine on that iron. Nokia has probably noticed this with cell phone games. They are miserable (as for computer game), but because they exist, people play them. Same goes here, if you are going to have some kind of setup box and it happens to have games, people are going to play with them. I mean, people wath shopping channels too! Tetris is whole more entertaining! Especially if games are free of charge..
I think is misjudgment to see this just as an game console. Nokia is doing something else here. Games are just one feature to of this concept.
If I understood Nokia's press release correctly, idea is to do open platform for home inforteinment (spelling intentional) box. This includes games but applications are much wider. This is like having an option to write programs to your TV, Stereo, Digi-TV setup-box etc. You name it! All these things are combined under same platform (OST).
Amazing that they claim to be a competitor to a product that doesn't even exist, and doesn't have any credibility in the market it is entering yet. I guess it just proves that M$ is the master of the hype market. Now only if they could produce a decent product before it hits version 3.0...
If this thing gets out of the Vaporware stages, I'll enthusiastically support it. I mean, we all have an old computer sitting around that you could put a TV capture card into, so why not make a TiVo clone? It would RULE!
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That's just the way it is
Come out late with a console that does the same thing as all the other consoles already out there, except without any development houses backing it? Wonderful. Who greenlighted that, anyhow?
By the time they get it out the door in 2002, the XBox and Nintendo will long since have been out there; the dust will have settled and the vast majority of gamers will already have made their choice: PS2, XBox or GameCube? Will anyone wait around for a cell phone makers' belated, ill-supported entry into the gaming market just because it's open source?
Granted it's short on details, but no plans for an infrastructure to back their TiVo/Ultimate TV clone other than the ability to do it?
Where's the revenue source, anyhow? Consoles and the like traditionally sell equipment as loss leaders... do they plan to be able to squeeze licensing and development costs out of Joe Programmer?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
...the money comes from where?
Consoles: loss leaders. It's a computer, and unless it's being sold as a loss leader, why would anyone buy it? It's open, so no devkit/royalties to rely on.
If they feel like bleeding money out of both ends, they could at least give me enough to retire before they do so.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Try this, not having seent the original, I can't say this is the same but it does cover some of what appears to be the same topic.
BizWire Story Link
Ehm... To me "open hardware" means not "everyone and his brother can and will mess with the specs" (so all clones would be incompatible to each other) but rather "all specs of the hardware are fully open", thus facilitating writing software / APIs that drive it.
But of course, one can definitely argue over what "open" means in this context...
On the other hand, my impression from the F-T article is that Nokia is going to market it as a digital set-top box that, by the way, also plays video games. In that case, video gaming is merely an extra and the spec's are more than adequate. Just don't expect a PS2 or Xbox killer system.
// TODO: fix sig
Second, this year is a very bad year for releasing a console system from a company new to the console market. Sony Playstation 2 is huge, Microsoft Xbox looks very strong, even Nintendo has a strong following (though Gamecube looks rather weak). And Nokia plans to release a game system this year against that competition? Good luck.
// TODO: fix sig
Well, the i-Opener doesn't run Linux. It runs QNX to be exact. People figured out how to get Linux onto it since it was basically a off-the-shelf computer with a proprietary front end.
But then, set-top-boxes and game consoles are intended for the masses, not for hackers. Why use a console (and develop for it) when you can play the Linux games on your PC? However, the hardware (digital TV card) and special applications (DVD player, etc.) might create some temptating possibilities.
--- Rectum?! Damn near killed em'! - Confucius
I am guessing that if they had any of the following important features, they would have said so:
Without these, this console is not going to be able to compete as a game console.
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Now, this may be quite different than a lot of slashdot readers, but it's not too different than a lot of other people. I know my mom hates the computer, but she does send email. I know a number of people like that.
What might be better is a bare bones system that can send email and surf, with a basic small OS that gives net connectivety and email use - you know, something any brain dead person could use, with two buttons: email or web. Can't really go wrong, there. But then give the ability to upgrade to make it more useful. Add a word processor and printer.
I know, I know, I just described a general purpose computer, which would be fine if given the utmost in simplicity. Most people that ask me for advice on buying a computer these days, when asked what they'll use it for, say "you know...email, surf the net..." Well what do you need a 1.5Ghz PC for? (well, the salesman at Best Buy might convince newbie that newbie needs it to connect to the internet faster...)
Stupid sexy Flanders.
But considering how badly this actually open company crashed and burned, I give this 2 months for Noika to play out the publicity potential and drop it.
I personally think that this is great for Open Source in general. Any support from major companies is a Good Thing (TM). The more that Linux is out in the public eye, the more likely that people will start seeing it as a viable alternative to other more proprietary/closed operating systems.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
Remember that Nokia got really big in the cellphone business. They don't sell many phones directly to the consumers, instead they sell them to phonecompanies, which then sell them to the enduser for a fraction of the price. The enduser has to sign a contract to use their services for a minimum time, like 6 months or a year.
They can do the same with the OST, maybe with cabletv and internet providers instead of phonecompanies, but in these days they are basically the same corporations.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the XBox. I am a disgruntled Dreamcast and PS1 owner who is mad that the DC died and that the nextgen PS doesn't pack the punch it should. Nintendo is a joke. But still, that's just my opinion, and with the console market so crowded right now, how can anyone expect to jump in and make any money?
Sound like a lot of VC money that is looking for a match to burn it.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
For me, the compelling app is the digital TV set top box (Hopefully, fully HDTV capable). Combine that with Tivo-like functionality
HDTV is encrypted in such a way that GGM owners can restrict recording of a program, and with that capability, who (other than PBS) won't?
Will I retire or break 10K?
How I long for the days of the Sinclair Spectrum.
Sinclair sold his hardware at a profit, and took no cut of the software.
All the best games were written by teenagers in thier bedrooms, and they could compete fairly with the big SW publishers.
That's a business model I can respect.
In the years since, the technology has got better, but the games have got worse. The current crop has no soul.
Bill, de do do do do do.
It'd be great if we could port current linux-based games to this unit. If this system can boost popularity of games written specifically for linux systems, will that also mean a huge increase in linux games for regular desktops?
Well as long as the games can be easily ported back to the Linux desktop then the desktop can run the games designed for the console system. I believe this is the beauty (well it really isn't beautiful, but I digress) that the Xbox games used the same API as the Windows desktop systems making porting between the Xbox and Windows a snap. Lets hope Nokia does the same for Linux!
In the end, everyone will have a PC
I don't think this will be the case down the road, why would "Grandma" want to buy a full-fleged PC (with all the added hassels and costs) when all she does is send e-mail? It may seem cheaper to some people to buy a dedicated gaming device and a dedicated e-mail device and a dedicated (insert your favorite digital system here). Sure you and I would rather have the real thing, but it isn't necessarly right for everyone.
Lets say for example the kids want to play some games, and you want to write an e-mail, it is hard to share the same system (unless you happen to have an X terminal handy).
And with all these devices lying around with some CPU time to spare can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of all of them? (Not trying to troll here, I'm being serious) You could share the resources across all the devices, your e-mail device needs a little more power to decode a video attachment? No problem, ship off some of some of the work to the gaming console, or even the toaster! This is assuming that everything will be networked together, but I feel that every new device should support networking right out of the box, it just seems natural to the progression of the networked world.
If they follow through on this, I will be the first one in line to buy one. The feature set of this thing is incredible. There is no way they could compete as a stand-alone game system. But, by bundling that as one of many features, they have a much better chance. For me, the compelling app is the digital TV set top box (Hopefully, fully HDTV capable). Combine that with Tivo-like functionality, and it's the killer app for HDTV enthusiasts. If it also has DirecTV functionality, it is the ultimate device!
I don't believe Nokia's batteries are really better than Ericsson's. What makes Nokia phones so nice is their power saving capabilities. If you just leave the phone turned on and don't use it at all the batteries may last for over a week, but when you talk the battery is empty in a few hours.
And then they're told it can play games too, many of which are free.
This is the sort of sales pitch that even I would take out my credit card for.
"We have made the hardware an open design so anyone else can make a clone or compatible product,"
I wonder if they will use standard pc hardware. It'd be pretty cool to be able to upgrade it as often as we like with standard hardware. Of course, I'm not sure how we'd go about installing drivers.
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But on the other hand... Nokia has a board of directors that can pull the plug at any given moment
True, but since this will be an open hardware platform, Sony need only stay in the game long enough to establish a standard. I think Sony can handle sticking around that long.
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Bernie Mills, vice president of marketing at CollabNet, said, "Nokia has made an important vote of confidence in open source software development. It is a business model that has enormous value in speed to market, and the creation of a large number of software applications."
It'd be great if we could port current linux-based games to this unit. If this system can boost popularity of games written specifically for linux systems, will that also mean a huge increase in linux games for regular desktops?
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The thing is that you can plug Linux all you want but a cute penguin isn't going to be much of a selling point for Joe Blow in his dorm room (unless Mr. Blow happens to be a geek).
Nokia does, I think, have the clout to pull off what Indrema couldn't. They've got money and an immensely popular product (and one could say they're already in the electronic games industry -- how many expert Snake players we got here?). Here's what Nokia *could* deliver:
-A decidedly bad-ass game system with included crackability. I'd be amazed if the technology involved was radically different from the Xbox.
-A ready-to-network cheap processing node a la that PS2-ish thing that Sony's marketing as a cheap supercomputer (I'd love to see a... Oh, wait, it already is...)
-A system with easy wireless connectivity -- just patch it into your cell phone. No worries about Bluetooth or 802.11...
But they need to have a killer app for it, and a cell-phone base station won't be it. Since the system will be open-source, it's a safe bet they won't be making their money off of runtime licensing. They can't market it like an ordinary game console because they won't be able to loss-leader it. Ever. I think it can be done, but I'm not quite sure how.
But I'd buy one.
/Brian
I think MS is in a deal with Nokia to create some vaporous competition to hype up the importance of the Xbox. My .02
-- This sentence is false.
In honour of the original lyrics, wouldn't this be more appropriate:
"99 IIS servers online, 99 IIS servers / take one down, hack around, 98 IIS servers online."
--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
If this thing is just a linux box then surely its not going to be hard to port or just install drivers for the games we have already.
They should ship this thing with Quake 3 or similar that would get some attention.
One thing that concerns me from the developer page
is that you cant gaurantee what hardware they may have.
and i quote "Oh yes. The OST platform is well suited for various applications. However, as it supports a number of input devices (keyboard, remote control, etc) you can't be sure that all game players do have a gamepad or joystick."
now this is going to be a major downside if a user has to buy a new input device for every game were as the PSX or PS2 all have the same game pad or compatible for every game.
It may seem a small amount for the controller but it can often turn people away if they have to buy extras to run things (just like a PC)
the idea of a console is to run EVERY game that is made for it out of the box and with no hassle.
we will just have to hope and see.
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
Your one stop science news and discusion site.
Nokia are so big that this is just a side project for them, which makes me think its for real or they wouldn't even bother announcing it.
It's not going to shift their stock price appreciabley so they're probably on the level.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
The difference between this and the andrema is that it is backed by a company with serious cash. Which means the project could stay fully financed the entire way.
But on the other hand... Nokia has a board of directors that can pull the plug at any given moment.
Its hard for a small-time company to break into the console industry, but Sony proved that a big corporation with a nice financial situation can do it (on the other hand, Sega proved that even a vet can loose in the industry).
Good luck to nokia, and grab as many developers to make games as possible!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
One of the strengths of writing for a console is that you KNOW that every unit is identical. This allows you to optimize exclusively for one CPU/Vid Chip/Drive Speed/Ram size, without worrying about driver overhead + incompatabilities. As an example, I've seen things on the Dreamcast that blow away a PC w/ 2x the specs.
Aditionally, there's the idiot factor. Almost anybody can understand the "put media in, hit power switch" idea, installing, uninstalling software, and maintaining the stability of the OS do require some form of skill/knowledge. (I have, in the past recieved money to 'fix' somebody's computer because they were 'out of RAM', only to find out that their HDD was full, and needed to have garbage deleted so that windows could make swap space...)
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Although I wish it were not the case, an open platform is destined to fail in the console gaming market, especially an open platform from a new entrant in the market.
The key to this market is quality software. People will roundly dump systems that fail to have some critical mass of quality software. An example of this is the dumping of the Atari systems in 1984 due to a lack of quality third party software.
An open system is going to have lots of software, perhaps lots of good software. Unfortunately, it is going to have piles of garbage from every Joe Farmer who wants to toss out a game and hopefully make a few bucks.
Unless Nokia's got a superb business plan behind this that involves developing their own games and entertainments to run on this system, promoting them so that the entertainments shout out to consumers above the fray of garbage, and is still able to turn a profit, this is going to fail. I really wish that an open system could succeed, but I fear that it won't happen.
DevolverDevolver's Homepage... more fun than a box of crackerjacks.
Here's hoping its not vapourware.
Cool... a game console that plays mp3s, records tv digitally, et al...
Now if it only would allow me to plug in my CueCat it would be perfect!
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
This article in The Register provides some interesting reading, quote :
Symbian, for those that don't know, is a joint company by Motorolla, Ericsson, Nokia and others that creates an OS for the next generation smart phones based on EPOC
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I don't claim to be enlightened, but I'll give it a go.
CPU seems a little underspecced, but that depends on the amount of off-chip processing available. For comparison purposes, the X-BOX will ship with a 700MHz processor, which won't touch the graphics pipeline at all.
Reasonable amount of memory. Be interesting to see if they adopt a unified memory architecture (again, cf. X-BOX).
Integrated video chip is definately the norm for consoles - no expansion required, therefore reduce costs and optimise data paths by putting everything on the same board. The feature list was bog-standard a couple of years ago around the time of the TNT(2). It's only a little up on the original PlayStation. I speculate that they may not be pushing this console as a direct contender to X-BOX etc. unless they have some pretty significant improvements to make graphically, since that is where, to an extent, the war is being fought at the moment. Current hardware is touting 'fully' programmable pipelines, along with a whole lot of cool features (cube environement mapping, per-pixel lighting, shadow generation in hardware, bump-mapping etc).
This would be a capable 3d machine a year or two ago. Now it could be considered a little dated.
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
. . .
The problem is that PC developers seem afraid of the console game style. Why oh why must I install half a gig for every game I want to play, when the same game runs on my PS2 that has no hard drive of its own ?
Installing a game should be optional, for example to let that avid quake/UT/tribes freak jump into the deathmatch a few seconds earlier because his HD is a bit quicker than his cd-rom, but for the rest of us, we don't mind waiting those extra seconds if it means we can have 500mb more usable space on our PC. Sure, hard drive space is a commodity, but that doesn't mean we should abuse it as much as we do.
Not so long ago people had 200mb drives, yet we had cd-roms and the games had FMV (sometimes nothing else). Games like Full Throttle simply installed a main executable and config files, everything else ran straight off the CD and it ran pretty damned fine on my old 2x cdrom. The first Diablo also only installed a few smallish things, totalling around 20mb IIRC, but then its loading times were disastrous if you were still toting around your 486 in those days. Still, it gave you time to heed nature's urges in-between levels.
Nostalgia aside, the PC game developers need to take a hint from their console-based cousins. It's modestly safe to assume that if your software requires at least a TNT2 or Voodoo3 to run, then it's a safe bet that your targeted gamers will have a half-decent cdrom drive as well. Heck, my PS2 probably has only an 8x or 10x drive in there, yet the games load in a reasonable amount of time and everything looks and plays great. 8x cdrom drives were commonplace in 1997, yet they're still sufficient for these expensive consoles and their fancy games. Why can't the common 32x drive push a PC game just as well if not better ?
If the developers can eliminate the installation process, then they will open themselves up to a whole arena of users who were either limited by their disk space (the 6 giggers who can only hold a couple games at any one time), or they're simply afraid of installing stuff because they don't know how to reinstall Windows if it goes zonkers. Heck, even I get tired of waiting for that lame installshield script to finish copying those zillions upon zillions of 4kb geometry files.
Take the best things about consoles, adopt them on a PC, and you've just eradicated the console market in one big blow. It's almost as cheap to build a decent little gaming PC than it is to buy that latest console that does (n+1)^2 bit graphics on your ugly-ass tv screen, and as a bonus the PC games are usually cheaper than their console counterparts because of the licensing and royalty issues. Anyone can do the math.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I find all these features more interesting than games. Why do people whine about "will there be games"? Don't you ever get it? I don't care about games, I want an open, hackable heart for the living room. Plus, I will need to get a digital Tv set-top box anyway. Nokia is smarter than Indrema - it doesn't overhype the gaming part.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
They are not trying to compete with Sony. PS2 can't do most of the stuff this Media Terminal does.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
You all know which country Nokia is from, right? Finland. (Finland - linux, does any connection come to mind?) Bearing this in mind, it would seem quite natural for Finlands largest company to bet some money on Linux.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion..
-- Henry David Thoreau
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
How is this different from the info in this slashdot story from January. Even back then they knew it would run linux.
Maybe the Financial Times needs to start attending technology trade shows.
Perspective correction is required because simple (2d-linear) texture mapping fails to take into account the effect of distance over the surface of a texture. For instance, mapping a checkerboard texture onto the 2d projection of a piece of ground results in an image where the lines in the grid fail to get closer together the further away they are.
The PlayStation 1 did not have perspective correction, and had to compensate by slicing polys into smaller pieces when they got closer to the viewpoint, thus helping to minimise the perspective artifacts.
Of course, every console since the N64 has had perspective correction - this is such a standard feature nowadays (as is Z-buffering!) that it's hardly worth mentioning. The fact that they do mention it is a little worrying.
Actually, the same could be said about gouraud-shading and alpha-blending too! This feature list is pretty basic stuff.
Do they really think people will shell out $200 to play Snake on their TV screens?
Remember the two things that Finland is most famous for - Nokia and Linus Torvalds. Alan Cox also visited their HQ in Finland last year. Rumours are that they are pretty serious about Linux.
HH
There is no way they will even beat PSX2. Hell, they won't even outdo Dreamcast, which was arguably a success in some sense of the word, but a miserable failure in actually supplying revenue to Sega.
And they will absolutely positively not beat the mighty Micro$oft. I don't care how many /.-ers support Linux, there is no way in hell that this Nokia hype-machine will do more than lose them money. What the hell are they smoking?
Yes they have the capital. Lots of companies have the capital to fund a console market. A very exceptional few can actually pull it off. Not even Sega can pull it off. M$ can, because we know they want it badly enough.
So why isn't Nokia going head-to-head against the GameBoy Advance. There is only one player in that market: Nintendo. N64 was a miserable placeholder in their product line -- a pathetic source of revenue that was a result of a poor business model. They were raped by Sony PSX. Sure the GBA is a nice piece of machinery, but it is still a 32-bit 2D platform worthy of games of but a 4 year old technology. Certainly Nokia would feel they could contribute more to a handheld (wireless) platform than wireless-newcomer Nintendo.
This thing is all wrong. Mark my words, all Nokia will do by pursuing this is reduce their earnings. Sure, allow Motorola a chance to make up some ground, why don't you...
I want to just forget that I ever read this thread or the article, but it's just so damn stupid. It's almost like when you see this bad wreck on the highway and you just have to slow down and take a look at the complete devestation and mayhem that has occurred. It's like when you know it is disturbing to scratch the chalkboard, but you do it anyway. It's like you know Madonna is like 45, but you still watch her sway that wrinkled butt of hers.
But Nokia?? Who the hell do they think they are!??
I'm reading through a couple of articles that talk about this "MediaTerminal", and I fail to see how FT.com got the impression that it was a competitor vs. the Xbox.
According to Nokia's MediaTerminal website, it's basically a PVR with Internet Access. There is a link to the Game Development section, and the FAQ states that it will play "a wide variety of games". But, looking at the tech specs, this piece of machinery doesn't stand a chance against the Xbox. Celeron 366? 4MB Video RAM? Seems a little too underpowered to me.
Very true. I heard Nokia even gave away a Linux-related award to someone (Linus?). I've never understood their resistance to the gnokii project though. Really, it seems out of place to come from such a pro-Linux company.
Although it's a moot point now I guess. All the new phones by Nokia are no longer winmodems, so there is no special protocol to release.
-Justin
I used to be an avid follower of the gnokii project, which was/is an attempt to create open source drivers for various Nokia digital phones. I even wrote a completely portable driver for the 51xx/61xx phones by using gnokii as a reference. As I remember, Nokia would never help the team out with any technical information. The company showed promise at one point, but then never delivered. For the years that the project has been going, not once has Nokia given them any help. And now they are embracing Linux with this set-top box?
This is just wrong.
-Justin
This same 'open design' policy is what brought x86 platforms into the mainstream. Everyone cloned it, and a wonderful pricewar of 'who can make the best the cheapest' made owning a computer very affordable. If this goes through, I won't be surprised to see these boxes replacing Nintendos and Playstations within 4-5 years, and box prices around $80 a piece within 8 years.
What the Media Terminal is primarily about is the digital TV standard commonly used in the Europe, MHP. All the fancy functionality is there just to kill the competition. Nokia has proven to be _very_ successful in the past doing the same thing in the GSM market and is now trying to do the same on digiTV field. If Nokia is able to launch their set-top box with a good software support (read: games), I think the competitors are going to have a tough time catching up with it. Most of the digiTV appliances only have the minimum set of functionality, the MHP implementation to be exact, so this is basically the history repeating itself once again: offer a bit more, publish the API to get the developer and market support, watch the competitors die. :)
Well with proper financial backing one can hope this wont turn into another Indreama, but still... the games have to be there, which means the 3rd party support has to be there. Nokia has a LOT to do to get 3rd party support yet, but i like the idea of an open hardware spec... this may mean a very different shift in console development and evolution... but probably not =P
-----------
MOVE 'SIG'.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
So how does this compare to DVB-MHP?
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles - scream and shout.
I think the box looks really cool, but I have a hard time believing them when they say xbox competitor. My thought on this is that if Sega couldn't compete against Sony, Nintendo, etc then what makes Nokia think they can. It still looks like something I would either build myself or buy. I just hope that Nokia's box doesn't suffer the same fate as the Indrema
For those of you who don't want to follow the link to the tech specs:
Technical Specifications
Software
Hardware
Memory
Graphics and Video Processing
Network Interfaces
Audio / Video Ouput Interfaces
External Interfaces
Content Protection
Digital Video Recording (DVR)
Power Supply
Dimensions
Environmental Conditions
While open hardware will keep prices low, you also get into the infinite hardware configurations situation. While the issues related to this have declined recently, it still is the bane of tech support everywhere.
Thankfully the PC has aged long enough to the point where this is a minor issue, and tied mostly to bargin PC's and hardware. Will new comers remember history or throw it out the window only to learn if all over again? Time will tell.
Perhaps nokia will do something similar to TiVo. You can get the hardware from Sony or Phillips, but it is pretty much the same hardware.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Expect this thing to feature a colorful interchangeable outer shell, not to mention annoying ringtones..
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
"If by brain cancer you mean great service at a low low cost, then yes we do that." -- Andy Dick
"pr0n": An anagram of "porn," possibly indicating the use of pornography. - www.microsoft.com
But, HOW they plan to make money DOES NOT MATTER. Nokia would not be doing this if they didn't have a way to make money off of it.
To make the obvious conclusion. If Nokia is going to make money off of this then everyone who codes for them deserves a share of that money. I don't see anywhere on ostdev.net where it shows how we get our share of the money.
Looks like they are just ripping off those of us who don't know any better.
Stonewolf
Anyone else here noticed that Nokia = Finnish and Linus Torvalds = Finnish.....hmm...
-Nano.
the X-Window Box, of course....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
There has been a lot of stuff around about Nokia's problems with s/w and mobile phones. The truth is that between they have some of the best stuff, which makes their phones much easier to use than many competitors. True, WAP sucked, but it did on many supplier's early phones.
As for the Finnish connection, well Nokia and Linux would be a good combination!
See my journal, I write things there
ThinkNic (www.thinknic.com) turns a profit on a $200.00 box that contains about 80% of the hardware that is needed for a game console.
Throw a 700 megahertz Cyrix III (.13 mm manufacturing which doesn't require a heat sink and fan), a GeForce 2 MX, a smallish hard drive, and a couple game controllers, into a ThinkNIC box and walla, you have yourself a piece of technology that can do 90% of what the XBox does. And you didn't spend the billion that MS did on R&D.
Sorry guys - this one isn't the mythical Linux/Games ticket yet, either.
I mean - who's going to publish games for it? Open Source coders... well... look at the quality of homegrown games on the PC. I'm not saying they're not capable - I just wouldn't buy a system based on the promise of, well... what I see.
Nokia probably won't stay with this for long. Every console manufacturer looses money on every unit sold - they make it back on license fees per game sold. If its an open platform, they want to turn a profit on the console? How will they compete with the Big Three?
Homepage for this project is http://www.ostdev.net/
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Can an enlighten 3D guru comment on these?
btw. specs here (pdf format).
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
There are two advantages of a gaming console.
From the consumer point of view, they are cheap, compare to PCs. 300$ is the going rate, I believe.
And they manage selling the consoles at a loss because they can charge *software developers* to make up the money.
Will Nokia be able to do this? No. You will have to pay *real* price, plus profit for Nokia.
So, would you take XBox @ 300$, or NokiaBox @ 750$ ?
Well, you are reading slashdot, so the naswer is pretty clear, but what would the average consumer buy?
Second, and more important, is hardware stability.
If you write to a console, you know that all other consoles of the same type are *identical*. So you can max out performance by depending on stuff that you can't depend on being present on PCs.
Nokia's plane to have an open platform, meaning clones, meaning mixed hardware.
So, the games wouldn't be as good, and it would cost more. Oh, joy, let's all go and get it because it's running Linux.
Sorry, this sound like a vastly inferior product to me.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
It's going to fail.
They can't sell it like other consoles, because it's open, so they won't make up their loses from the games.
And the hardware is going to be changed quite often, so here goes the other advantage of the console.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
It is good to see Microsoft getting more competition, but without good games, they will not get anywhere. They will need to have either some stellar games or some heavyweight developer names behind them if they expect to sell any systems. I would hate to see a potentially good system go to waste just because there was no good games like the way it was with Atari Jaguar.
The system specs were near identical to the xbox but it crashed and burned. Nobody cares that in runs linux its all about the games and the hype neither of which linux can provide.
Because it won't neccessarily draw the general public's attention to Linux, but will serve as a step in helping to make Linux a more apparently viable platform for console gaming, and anything else for that matter. It's almost like promoting Linux in order to promote Linux if that makes sense. Get a game machine, a _good_ game machine, out into the market using Linux, let us geeks see how good it is, and let the snowball effect kick-in. Who knows. Maybe a few years from now, all the console boxes will be running Linux... I worked for a company for a very long time that is responsibility for a very well known and uqiquitous browser plug-in that actually used the browser plug-in to accomplish kind of the same thing. Before the plug-in, lot's of people used titles developed with thier authoring app but never actually new about them. Now, since the plug-in, almost everyone has heard of them. They give the plug-in away for free, and use the built-in advertising (conceptually, they don't actually display ads!) to leverage thier authoring tools. The end-result being very good, at least from a finacial standpoint. :)
My guess is the Linux == Big Bucks approach. Any Linux-based system gets free advertising in web sites frequented by people who would likely buy them (this article is proof of that). And companies know that having a Linux product, no matter how proprietary the hardware, API, etc might be, means a chance at a huge IPO.
Sorry guys. I'm not buying it. Have there been any consumer device running Linux that have sold well to non-Linux users? Both the TiVo and i-Opener seem to appeal to the slashdot crowd, which in the latter case, seems to be a bad sign for retailers. I just don't think that Slashdot readers can make up enough of a market to justify all this hype. Maybe if the Yoppy has a successful launch things will change. I know it would change my impressions.
Famous last words. It doesn't take a marketing genius (which I am) to smell the bullshit with this one.
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$ chown -R us:us yourbase
Makes me wonder... with so many gaming platforms... who is going win? Nokia and Microsoft are getting in so late in the game, its like... why bother.
In the end, everyone will have a PC, so why not just devote resources to that, and the cheaper home computer?
This could be what the linux gamers have been needing.
With enough of a user base this could be exactly the impetus that game developers need to see the linux as a viable business solution. The lack of linux based gamers is IMHO what has kept developers from commiting the resources to fully utilize the capabilities of a *nix OS's.
Loki and the other can move to the forefront as they have the budgets to compete with the other big players.
I'm really excited.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
Not only do the specs on the xbox blow this completely out of the water, but Microsoft can and will probably sell the xbox for cheaper then Nokia can afford to sell this little gadget. As far as games go...with those specs, the games will no doubt suck. Anyone who thinks that this thing will be a serious contender in the game console arena needs to get that penguin out of their ass. I can see this being a small competitor to Ultimate TV, but that's about it.
The last paragraph highlights a comment from the president of Sega, Hideki Sato. The statment shows that the fault with their failure was not in the hardware or games, but in the lack of marketing. I have also seen other articles at The Register that confirm stories of arguing at executive levels. This bickering led to the lack of marketing, and hence the demise. And this demise is much to my dismay, as I am a avid Sega fan. NEED SOULCALIBUR! Any way...
Sega has done similar things in the past, as seen when they failed to market the Sega Nomad. The Nomad was essentially a portable Genesis, and it rocked. Information on it can be found here and here.
Sega has continually disappointed for years, making the same mistakes with several systems, including the Saturn, the Nomad, and the Dreamcast. I am at a loss for words at the mismanagement of this potentially groundbreaking company.
One thing I find interesting about this new console is the decision to use an 366 MHz Intel Celeron. I would assume that if Nokia wanted to really compete, they would use either a faster processor or at least the Pentium. I know that Linux would make excellent use of any CPU beyond a 486 (*grin*), but wouldn't the greater power be needed to compare to something like a 766Mhz Pentium 3? As Nokia has not released what kind of video processing/GPU/etc, we have little to compare to in the visual arena. Although looking good is not what determines how good a game is, it helps. So with what we currently know, I have some substantial doubts about this system.
The future remains uncertain....
It should be http://ps2.ign.com/news/33636.html
My apologies
Having a nice business going for itself in the mobile sector, I think the Nok is doing something which doesnot make business sense. It doesnot have the financial muscle to wrest this market away from the likes of sony et al..It also doesnt take advantage of its existing leadership in mobiles, cos I dont see how the two businesses can reinforce each other. Having a closed source model in one of its businesses and an open source model in another doesnt help anybody. I think this is just a publicity gimmick..
"Do something man. Right now."