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G1 Google Phone Could End Up the Most Popular Console Ever
Jon Jordan writes "Pocket Gamer has been getting its fingers inside the unique new Zeebo console — a sub $200 system designed for emerging markets — to discover it's based on a hacked version of the T-Mobile G1 Google phone. It effectively consists of the chipset from the HTC Dream/G1 Android phone, plus some extra I/O to deal with TV screens, controllers and the like. If this gaming, entertainment and educational console for the billion-strong middle classes in emerging economies such as Brazil and India catches on, HTC could become a serious global gaming force. Qualcomm's Mike Yuen said in an interview, 'We have this mass market chipset, and our next-generation chipset is getting faster. What we announced, [Qualcomm's] Snapdragon [chipset], is going to netbooks; it bumps it a few notches above that. The cell phone business, including us, is never going to build a processor that's going to match or surpass what the video game guys do. So, why chase that?'"
This Zeebo tyhing won't emerge in Brazil for the simple fact that a PSP2 is cheaper than this Zeebo, and it has tons of games and it can be hacked.
Why do they assume that that Zeebo thing is just going to be so popular? I mean I wish them to be successful, but realistically when you're not an industry giant you can hardly hope to sell 100,000 units.
You just got troll'd!
The article mentions that it's powered by a Qualcomm chipset (as are many phones by HTC and others) and makes the leap that it's identical to the HTC Dream. This is an unsourced claim by TFA. It does not follow from the fact that Qualcomm is involved.
I see somebody has already edited the Wikipedia article on "Zeebo" to say it is a T-Mobile G1.
I know it's not a particularly popular observation, but generally the success or failure of a console generally depends on the branded content that gets developed for it. What games does the system have? Does the system manufacturer have good relations with the major publishers? Does it have good tools? People buy consoles, particularly plug-into-the-wall systems, for the games. Without support of developers, it just turns into one of those Wall-Mart knockoffs.
It seems sorta premature (and logically peculiar) to declare the G1 to be possibly "the most popular console evar!" It's a bit like seeing a slashdot story 15 years ago about how the Mac will possibly become the most popular console evar! because someone took apart a Pippin and discovered it had a abunch of Apple ICs in it.
As far as the success or failure of a particular game platform is, the actual hardware, once exceeding a certain minimum threshold of performance, is basically redundant.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I just finished playing a very addictive and free game on the G1, in Brazil. My Wii is gathering dust. The G1 is a very amazing phone, it beats any Palm easily.
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
Also, TFA says "it's expected in Brazil that Zeebo games will be available for around $12". Since PS2 games in Brazil typically cost R$10 (around US$5), Zeebo games at $12 are too expensive.
"emerging markets"
Translation: "We have no idea who's going to buy this."
I rarely hear manufacturers say 'Yeah, we'll be lucky to push 100 units'. Wild speculation on the fact that based on price this will sell massively is, well, wild speculation. Getting a dominant platform is complex and requires a lot of work, as seen by the fact that many years later, we're still waiting on the Year Of The Linux Desktop.
Could it be that Qual needs profits and we're in a recession--it's a good time to think outside the box.
Also, I think the rest of the world will be just fine with a cheap, but powerful game console vs. an XBox360 or PS3 (and HD TV, cables, 5.1 stereo+speakers, game furniture, etc...). Of course anyone in the game industry would beg to differ.
G1 Google Phone Could End Up the Most Popular Console Ever
Just like the last 10 years have been the Year of Linux on the Desktop.
...
Check his name, it links to pocketgamer.co.uk.
I'm really tired of the overuse, especially in the news media, of the words "could" and "might". What's often lacking when they are used is any sense of how probable the outcome might (!) be. Perhaps I'm just overly sensitive to it now, but the NY Times seems to be particularly prone to this type of reporting, stating a supposition but failing to adequately describe the probability that the supposition is closer to true than false.
"G1 Google Phone Could End Up the Most Popular Console Ever"
No, it couldn't. You're wrong, and stupidly wrong at that. Next story please!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
And the iPhone is going to be competitive gaming platform too!
People.
Look at the fucking sales for the Nintendo DS.
Look at them. 103 million Nintendo DSs have been sold without contracts, for use as a game system.
Then look at the software sales.
The DS has well over 400 million software sales under it's belt. Keep in mind these games typically sell for $39.95.
Fighting against Nintendo in handheld games is a fool's errand.
> G1 Google Phone Could End Up the Most Popular Console Ever
Second only to the original Joystick game.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It would have everything, then.
Why would someone buy a console with no titles, regardless of price?
Apparently it runs titles for Qualcomm BREW. You might recognize BREW from Verizon Wireless in the United States. From the article: "They submit their games to Qualcomm as they would any other BREW application, and they get paid in the same way." But I've read that BREW is even more closed and painful than the iPhone SDK.
But in this case, the success may depend upon what's not developed for it, like DRM and whether the platform is open
The article suggests it's not. The console uses games for Qualcomm BREW, and that's more closed than even the iPhone.
Grrrr. How *dare* you! Doubleminus badthink! Unmutual!
I think the rest of the world will be just fine with a cheap, but powerful game console vs. an XBox360 or PS3 (and HD TV, cables, 5.1 stereo+speakers, game furniture, etc...).
I think you mean Wii. But then Brazil lays a tax that amounts to about 150 percent on game consoles, after considering the import duty, the value added tax, and the interstate commerce tax. If the tax on phones is less than the tax on video game consoles, then buying phone motherboards from a supplier in Brazil and manufacturing the console in Brazil probably saves money.
Where are the games? They're going to have to cost a lot less than $12 for what you'll be able to play on that device. It almost would have made more sense just to go back to selling the original Playstation or something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
IIRC in Asia they had TV Game Consoles with Keyboards based on the Nintendo Famicom (NES Nintendo Entertainment System in the USA as it was called without the keyboard) and due to lack of IP laws electronic companies build their own Famicom clones for like $50USD that included 101 Famicom games inside of it. It became a best selling game console because it was cheap and had a lot of educational games on it.
It lasted until the Sony Playstation beat it, but due to IP laws not being enforced everyone and their brother made pirated Playstation CD disks for like $1USD to $5USD each, and Sony had to raise the price of the Playstation to cover losses to piracy. It seemed when they sold the Playstation in some stores they modified it to play pirated games. I think after that Sony gave up selling the Playstation 2 because it cost more and they didn't want a repeat of piracy. But people where able to buy the Chinese or Japanese version of the PS2 anyway in places like Thailand, even if Sony didn't want to sell to Thailand due to high piracy of Playstation 1 games.
I think South America, and Central America and Mexico had the Commodore 16 and Plus4 as popular game consoles because Commodore had dumped them on those markets really cheap. Because the USA, Europe, etc had rejected them, and they got replaced by the Commodore Amiga (68000 series based GUI workstation/game personal computer) and Commodore PC-Colt (IBM compatible PC).
The trick it seems to make a good selling game console in third world nations is to make the console cheap enough to afford, and find a way to foil piracy of games.
I am not sure what kind of DRM the Zeebo and Android based systems have, but unless they can sell games at a reasonable rate, there is going to be a piracy market to sell the games after cracking the DRM or modifying the Zeebo unit to play copied versions of the games.
I have heard that even the Apple iPhone DRM was cracked and that on some bittorrent web sites are iPhone apps already cracked that can be downloaded and installed on iPhones. If they can do it with iPhones then they can do it with Android based game consoles.
It seems like a fool's errand to sell a $200 game console and then $12 games that can easily be cracked by pirates and sold cheaper. Either have the nations enforce the IP laws, or face the threat of piracy of the Zeebo games like all of the others had done.
You can examine the market by paying attention to what happened in the past, as I just did above. If the Zeebo can solve the piracy problem they might have a good market, if not, they will fail like the others before them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The photo at the top of the article makes it clear that the PROTOTYPE for the Zeebo is a TMobile G1 attached to a miniPCI video in/video out card and apparently another miniPCI 802.11g wireless card. This is definitely not going into production.
Will the Zeebo take off? Definitely not.
The developers seem to forget that there IS a very popular low-cost console sold in emerging markets, the PS2. The PS2 has VASTLY more capabilities than the Zeebo will have, has thousands of games, and it's cheaper. New games are being released for the PS2, at a rate that will almost certainly beat Zeebo. Did I mention the games are vastly superior on the PS2?
I kind of agree to this reasoning. Nintendo wii even now doesn't support a decent cricket game.
GameCube games run on Wii, but I assume Zapper: One Wicked Cricket for GameCube doesn't count.
This is going to fail, hard.
The Nintendo cult is string here. And most popular games elsewhere are also popular here. People are simply not gonna buy a console that doesn't let them play Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Halo, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Spore or Grand Thief auto.
The only way this console can be popular is if it play games from already popular consoles, preferentially pirated.
Actually if this thing played pirated DS games it WILL sell like hot burritos*. But that's not gonna happen.
Did I mention that there's a very popular type of burrito here named 'pirata'?
But... the future refused to change.
...go buy yourself a lisp machine and tell me that it is going to take off.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
I think there is a market for a *really cheap* console, but really cheap is sub-$100. Probably sub-$75.
$200? For this? Didn't the Gamecube, which is VASTLY more powerful, sell for $99? Yes. It did. NO ONE is going to pay $200 for this piece of shit.
Which raises the question, why don't we have cheap Gamecube-level consoles? Or even Playstation/N64-level consoles? It would seem like you could build something like that for $50 or so. That would probably sell pretty well, if the games maxed out at $15.
How much would it cost Nintendo to re-release the NES? They could even throw all their Library on one cartridge which would sell like hotcakes in the developing world. I wouldn't hold my breath about HTC becoming a big player in this market.
call Nintendo and see what kind of deal you can get if you order a billion Wiis or Gameboy DSi
The reason it is going to fail isn't because its graphics are crappy (already proven wrong with PSP x DS)... it's because in brazil we already have a huge PS1/PS2/Wii pirating/street market selling scene going to, for less than 5 dollars you get yourself a copy of, say, Resident Evil 4, compare that for about 120 dollars for an original PS2 game here (HECK a crappy DS Cartridge is about 100 dollars, wtf)
It's not about medium-class brazilians not having the cash to buy a PS2 or even a PS3 if they save a bit (we're not in 1970's), the thing is games are so fucking stupidly expensive that if you're into gaming, you're going to have to spend all your savings to buy you the games you or your kids like.
The same thing goes on for Windows, MS Office, Autocad, Photoshop or every mainstream app out there T__T
ps: i live in Japan and the game prices here are on par with united states/europe, i mean, where people earn more they have cheaper games and cheaper mcdonalds :) wtf
'We have this mass market chipset, and our next-generation chipset is getting faster. What we announced, [Qualcomm's] Snapdragon [chipset], is going to netbooks; it bumps it a few notches above that. The cell phone business, including us, is never going to build a processor that's going to match or surpass what the video game guys do. So, why chase that?'
Unfortunately, the processing power of any gaming system means absolutely nothing if the games suck.
Forget fancy graphics and get back to gameplay. The more "ooh isn't that pretty" in the game, the less attention I'm paying to the fun parts.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
It's insane.
NONE of these 'developing country' systems has ever taken off. Closest thing I could think of was the Nintendo iQue system - they launched in China and as far as I can see never made it outside of China. Bit strange that whilst they had both the hardware and the games, they decided it wasn't worth the effort of pushing it round the rest of the world.
iQue actually had some things going for it. It was only a generation behind, and came with the N64 library of games (as it was a chip-shrunk N64) - which were harder to pirate in the first place. i.e. if you wanted to play Mario64, an iQue was/is the cheapest way of doing it.
They can't be selling to people who have consoles - as these people will already have a PS1/PS2/Xbox/whatever... So they're aiming at new buyers I guess.. maybe.. but then how're they going to attract them? What big name game will entice?.. insane, just insane.
The Gamasutra article (the article with actual content, not wild speculation) is based on BREW -- a Qualcomm proprietary runtime with no Linux involved.
It has Android on it. That was about the only thing that made the G1 phone interesting. The HTC hardware is solid, but nothing groundbreaking. The BREW store has always sucked, because of Qualcomm's unreasonable barriers to entry for developers. They stuck with their gated community of content and buy-before-you-try for years and just figured it was the natural order for most of their users not to care about mobile phone apps.
Arguably, the Java-based Android OS is bad for app performance compared to BREW's native C code. But if you want an exciting console for people that are relatively poor (emerging market), then its fairly obvious to have something like Android Market or iPhone App Store that is full of freeware, shareware, and amateur projects.
Where did G1 Mobile come from? They are using the BREW platform, a competitor to Android.