Tapwave Closes its Doors

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."

Comments

It is reminiscent of the PSP and Gameboy Advance

[ReformedExCon]

The gadget seems to have been a multi-purpose device that played games in addition to being a standard PDA.

I wonder, in this day and age, whether such combination devices are really that useful/usable. There is a very strong drive to integrate all sorts of technologies together into super-portable-do-it-all devices (like "smart" phones). However, is there really a market for an All-in-one device like the Zodiac?

What I see is a PDA with a gaming API grafted on, not a solid gaming device. The device itself looks like a gaming device (sans nice styling), but that pretty much precludes it from being a portable/usable PDA due to the larger size.

I think we can chalk this one up as another failure in the handheld gaming device category, joining GB3D, Lynx, TG-portable, and the latest NintendoDS.

But inquiring minds want to know, will the existing stock be made available at reduce prices?

Parent trolRe:It is reminiscent of the PSP and GBA

[kesuki]

Nice troll, but hey get your Facts Straight
5 million DSes out there... DS is by no means a failure. In comprison, the PSP has failed so misserably that they took it off the market in the UK. better hand-held console? They've lost to nintendo before, and sony is no exception.