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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?'"
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!
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.
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.
Yeah. More to the point, in my limited experience the middle classes in any country are as aspirational as in the developed world. They're not going to want a shitty console with an underpowered chipset when there are alternatives available.
[FUCK BETA]
"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)
Only illegal copies cost $5. You could say also that they cost nothing if I download them from pirate bay. And if you're from Brazil too, you know legal copies of PS2 games here cost a lot more than that. Zeebo is going after a different market, offering legal copies costing $12.
But IMHO, I don't think the poor kids here are looking for the type of games this console is going to have (like Quake, Sonic, etc). I see this working for parents buying this for young kids, but in general, once kids grow up to the age of 12-14, they will ask for newer consoles, newer games.
The problem is that there is no isolated place in the world today. Wanting the latest is not a luxury that only 1st world countries have anymore. Information travels very fast nowadays, and products appear here almost at the same time they appear in USA or Europe. Poor kids on the street here in Brazil may not have anything to eat, but they surely know that a PS3 exists, they see a Wii or Xbox360 demos on stores as they pass by.
So, the fact is that that poor kids/parents will surely prefer to buy a not so old PS2 in the black market free of taxes for $150 or less than buying a legal version of Zeebo with 15 year old games for about the same price.
So, yes, I see this console working for a specific market, but I don't see it as any revolution like being the most popular console ever.