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Helix - Handheld Game Platform From Ex-Palm Staff
madopal writes "It seems Reuters is reporting that some ex-Palm officials have announced a new gaming platform called Helix. The company is called Tapwave, but there's nothing on their site yet." This article in the San Jose Mercury News has a few more details - apparently, the unit will even feature an analog joystick and trigger buttons, and with its Palm OS organizer functionality, is apparently aimed at an older, more crossover audience than the Gameboy Advance.
Could these guys have a trademark problem with these guys?
They, too, produce a product called Helix for various media type things.
What I think would make a project like this REALLY stand out is Wireless (or wired, I guess...) internet and/or network access. Cell phone technology allows games to be played over net connections, lets make a portable game machine do it!
-baron
Polaroid. See what develops!!
The market is going to be flooded with handheld systems and eventually Nintendo's product will come out victorious. That's how it has been for the last decade, why wouldn't it continue that way?
-RPG
The Helix boasts twice the color palate of the Game Boy and nearly 16 times that of the N-Gage.
... the roof of its mouth is twice as big?
Ummm
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Will the organizor features compete with the Palm?
Will MP3 player features compete with the iPod?
Will the gaming features compete with the GB SP?
If not, we are going to have another device that does three or four thing, but does them really poorly.
I'm dreaming of a smallish device (flip style, deck of cards) that will be a great cell phone, a great PDA, and a great mp3 player, and maybe play games... But i still think we are about two years off from that.
I'm interested in the next Handsprings, but they still seem so plasticky and the bezels add some much to the size...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
I'm all for competition in the mobile gamming market, but I have information for Nokia and Tapwave. There are more than just kids who use the GBA. I have serious doubts that a lot of 12-year-olds were chomping at the bit to install their afterburner. I would guess that mostly adults were looking at that upgrade. I doubt that many kids are playing Golden Sun or Advance Wars. I don't think that it's impossible for them to do so, but I think there are many older gamers that play these titles. The bottom line is that there better be a dang good reason for adult gamer to buy another portable machine cuz the GBA does just fine for adults.
My point is that the GBA certainly has an adult following (probably much more than the original GB or GBC). I would be absolutely estatic if N came out with a GBA SP2 with added PDA features (maybe a built-in warning alarm, "you have been playing for 12 hours straight, eat food and attend to bodily functions!). It wouldn't be too difficult for N to produce such a thing and you can bet if N-gauge or something else starts to eat up too much of the portable market that N will start to move (not fast, but they will eventually). Heck maybe their already thinking of such a hybrid beast such as N-gauge. It can't be too far from their mind. They lost the console market to Sony, and if they lost the portable market I think N would be dead in the water. For that reason I think they came out with the SP. That was the ace up their sleave in case someone were to come out with a competing product with a better screen. N knows what it is to go from hero to zero (well, not zero.... Maybe 2 or 3 out of 5, but they do suffer in the console market).
Connell and Lim said the target audience for the Helix consists of people 18 years to 34 years old who have largely "graduated" from Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s (7974.OS) Game Boy Advance portable gaming unit.
What audience are they talking about there? this is almost troll-like rhetoric i'd more expect to find on a pro-xbox anti-everything else messageboard.
maybe it's the audience that doesn't know the difference between a good game and a bad game.
Not to mention that I've already got a Palm I don't use...
Same here. I'm 28 and have over 20 GBA games (some are my daugters) and about the same again for GameBoy (Color) ones.
I don't want PDA features in my gaming device though. I want more power.
Competition will be good but I can't wait to find out what nintendo have instore for us next...
I don't have an SP yet, not sure about the design as I have large fingers - might be a good option for my daughter though.
When I first saw the gp32, I really wanted it. Until I found out that it's not fast enough to emulate most systems very well.
If this thing is a palm device and a system that'd be good for emulation, I'd gladly pay $300-$400 for it.
Will the organizor features compete with the Palm?
ya, it is using the palm OS.
Will MP3 player features compete with the iPod?
Given sufficent storage media and a good sound chip it whould do fine.
Will the gaming features compete with the GB SP?
they claim a vast improvement on graphics, but the Turbo Graphics 16 portable, and the Neo-geo portable attest that that is not the deciding factor.
If they can figure out a way to make the controls better than a normal PDA it should be good... as it is Pokemon Silver works great on my ancient Clie. Although this could be a stumbling block... someone wanting a good PDA isn't going to like arcade controls, and a gamer will hate PDA controls. it will be intresting to see how this plays out (no pun intended).
I'm more intrested in a powerful Ipaq to run emulation on. The world seems to be getting sick of proprietary hardware/software combos.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
The developer page also doesn't say how much RAM will be in these things, or if they'll include a hard drive ala iPod. My guess is it'll be strictly RAM of one sort or another, if their claim of "less than 6 ounces" is true, so there can't be a lot of space. (It'll never replace an iPod as an MP3 player, in other words.)
The hardware array is impressive for a package that small...ATI accelerated graphics, Yamaha audio, built-in rumble pack, dual lithium batteries (sounds like it's gonna need 'em), integrated Bluetooth wireless. But another thing I can't see on there...what's the form factor going to look like? Probably not rectangular, like the Palm...maybe it'll be about the size and shape of an XBox controller (the original big ones).
Also, how will software be distributed for these things? The logical choice would be on SD cards, since PalmOS already supports them...but how comfortable would people be with "game cartridges" the size of postage stamps? (Yeah, I know, they have games on SD cards for ordinary Palms already, but that's a different market.)
There's a lot of questions to answer still about the TapWave, and the answers will probably be critical to measuring the success of the product.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Nintendo had the biggest-selling console. Then the console market was flooded with systems, and Nintendo came out victorious, didn't they?
Well, no, they didn't. Because the competitors went after a different market.
Nintendo's Game Boy has the 12 year old kid market sewn up, but there are people like me who'd go for a system that offered something other than endless cutesy platform games.
Yes, OK, that's a slight overgeneralization, but believe me--I wanted something like a Game Boy Advance to replace my Atari Lynx. I read through the reviews of the best Game Boy Advance games at metacritic, and I could only find a couple I'd be at all interested in playing.
It's like the GameCube vs PS2: The only GameCube games I really want to play are available on the PS2 anyway. Maybe I'd like Zelda, but I'm quite happy with Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Rayman, and so on to fulfil my 3D platform/adventure needs.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Does it say "priscilla" in golden letters and is shiny purple all over? I dont think it would appeal to me much, I'll stick with GBA SP I think.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I have full-sized adult fingers, and the SP is actually more comfortable than the classic GBA design. Not sure exactly why, but it is. The tilt to the screen and better tactile feel of the buttons helps, but the overall grip is better too.
For example, I got past a boss in Metroid Fusion that had been giving me problems with the old GBA, the first time I tried him with on my SP.
I'm
-- Bander
What we need more of is science!
I have full-sized adult fingers
Hehe. me too! Except I have full sized adult fingers of someone that is 6'7"...