Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Tapwave Closes its Doors

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the calling-it-quits dept.

ewhac writes "Tapwave, makers of the universally acclaimed Zodiac mobile gaming device/media player/PalmOS PDA formally announced on their Web site that, 'the Zodiac business was discontinued and service and support are no longer available as of July 25th 2005.' The Zodiac was a PalmOS 5.2 device with gaming and media features, including ATI graphics and Yamaha sound acceleration, proportional joystick, two SD slots, Bluetooth, 200MHz ARM CPU (Freescale i.MX1), and up to 128M of RAM. At the most recent Palm developer conference, Tapwave employees were showing Zodiacs running their own port of Linux 2.6.10, with ports of SDL, Python, PyGame, mpg123, and primitive power management. It is unknown what will become of this work."

2 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Re:An answer looking for a problem by djrogers · · Score: 5, Interesting
    If I want a game system that's pocket portable, I will play with my PSP (better library of games, better gaming platform).
    The zodiac was on the market for a couple of years before the PSP - for a long time it had by far the best screen and graphics available in a pocket...

    If I want a PDA, I will use my HP hx4705 (VGA screen, better support by 3rd party programmers, better power management).
    Not sure where you're getting your information - you do realize this thing runs Palm-frickin'-OS, right? There are so many stinkin' 3rd party apps for these it's unbelievable. And power management? Hunh? Where on earth did you get the idea that was a problem?
    --
    Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
  2. Re:An answer looking for a problem by maethlin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Absolute truth... the only thing that killed the Zodiac was lack of marketing. If you took that EXACT same device and had the sony name brand and marketing behind it, half the known world would own one and would be exclaiming what a fantastic gadget it was. If people could remove their sony-bias for a moment, they'd see that the PSP isn't really all that exciting (no touch screen, no internal storage, etc.) Ya it's a decent gaming device, but hardly revolutionary if you consider how long ago the Tapwave came out.