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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'.
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
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."
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.
"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,
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.
Pretty funny acctually.. A game console called cheese. :)
-henrik
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
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.
All the hardware is in place, both the Hauppauge and ATI TV cards work fine under Linux using the bttv kernel module. There are several decent programs for capturing from the card, goto freshmeat and do a search. I prefer RealProducer Basic because I don't have to worry about Video and Audio sync, which I found was a problem with some others and fairly small file sizes. Setting up a cron job to do the recording at the proper time is easy as well. What this is missing is the TiVo's ability to download current TV listing and adjust recording times when neccessary. This could probably be done with a perl script which downloads the schedule from TVGuide.com, then searches for the programs you specify and/or present you with a menu of options, then update the cron job accordingly. Depending on the information TVGuide.com has you may even be able to look for a paticular actor or director.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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?
--
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
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!
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.
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 --
Can an enlighten 3D guru comment on these?
btw. specs here (pdf format).
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.