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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)