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Panasonic Invites Gamers To the Jungle
donniebaseball23 writes "In a move that will instantly conjure up memories of the infamous 3DO failure, Panasonic has once again decided to throw its hat into the gaming ring, unveiling an online-focused handheld called the Jungle. It features a high-resolution display, a D-pad, a touch pad, and a full mini-keyboard in addition to standard gaming shoulder buttons. Wireless support is a given, as Panasonic is talking heavily about the console's online features, but whether that's Wi-Fi or 3G remains unclear. M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon said, 'The Jungle is a highly specialized dedicated portable for a non-existent market. This is an unprecedented hardware strategy, and probably for good reason. If MMO players want to go more portable than a laptop, I guess this would be the way to go. Frankly, this looks like a non-starter.'"
An anonymous reader notes comments from NetDevil's Ryan Seabury, who thinks the decision to have the device run Linux is a mistake.
If it runs Linux then they are going to be guaranteed a few sales from people just wanting to tinker with it.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Artist, developers and coders will learn to write for this as they did any system and get really good at it too.
unless it has massive marketing and investment (hundreds of millions, if not billions) then no they won't. artists, developers and coders need to make a living like everyone else. There is currently a glut of consoles and portables to the point that I doubt such a niche market focus has any hope of succeeding to the point where game devs want to spend time on it.
We will see if and when it fails. If Panasonic can make the dev cycle fun and very low cost they could be onto something unique.
Where Sony, MS, Apple ect lock out/make demands/rent/manage Panasonic could be very very inclusive.
As for "marketing and investment" - marketing sure that will cost, investment Linux is done, ready to go.
Panasonic can offer good tools, I am sure someone will give it a try.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Welcome to the jungle
We got fun 'n' games
We got everything you want
Honey we know the names
They may not need to learn that much if Panasonic uses OpenGL 2.0 ES for graphics and an ARM core, because there are a lot of people who already develop games for phones that have just that.
I mean, look at the most popular gaming handheld today... the nintendo DS! It does not run Linux, and so therefore requires no porting work on it at all! I can play portal and crysis on it no problem, as well as Minesweeper from Windows 95. And don't forget Chip's Challenge. Man, that game was awesome.
Seriously, the whole games-are-bad-on-Linux thing is taken out of context. The argument makes sense for desktop systems, not for a portable gaming platform that's for custom designed games. If something like that ran Windows 7, it would be a disaster. And the fact that TFA mentions how OS X would have been a better choice for Panasonic makes it even more laughable. For something like this, a custom API, architecture, and software distribution is what they are after, and it hardly matters how they implement it. There is little chance this will run the X window system, and if it does, I would hardly enjoy using openoffice with a d-pad.
I have copy pasted my comment I left on Kotaku here to where it may actually be read by some intelligent souls.
This console is obviously *not* x86 (aka "Intel") based and therefore any "but Windows this, OSX that" is irrelevant as they do not run on the architecture. The fact is that Linux is a sound choice for the platform because it is actually well suited to running on an ARM based platform. Windows CE is just laughable in general and there is no way that Apple would license iOS to anybody else.
In my opinion Android (a Linux derivative) is a better choice than because it has a development framework and tools available, stable ABI and also does not use X11 display server. Games developed for Android will also be playable on many more devices than just the Jungle and therefore it will be easy to attract developers.
The NetDevil guy is obviously a freaking idiot because a) he thinks that this device would somehow magically make its consumers part of the Linux community and b) that the Linux community are unwilling to pay for things. This is not true because there is a lot of commercial open source products and several indy games have been extremely successful due largely to Linux releases. Take for example The Humble Indy Bundle and World of Goo "pay what you want" sales in which Linux users were proven by statistics *willing* to pay *more* than Windows or Mac users. I find that in general Windows users are the most resistant to paying for software. Funny how market share doesn't matter.
I have doubts about the design of this device. Even disregarding the power of embedded hardware (Nvidia's Tegra platform *almost* could pull this off) there is no way you could play current generation 3D MMOs reminiscent of WoW and EVE Online (I play both of these on Linux BTW) as the screen is just too small and the touchpad and D-Pad are not suitable. Browser based MMOs are much more likely. I would imagine this to be like a Nintendo Gameboy but on a more open and accessible platform.
Also what is with the random "Linux OS will be an obstacle as well in this regard." just thrown into the middle of the third last paragraph? I can't believe this crap made it onto a major news site. This belongs on somebody's blog.
Which is Linux with a Dalvik runtime and VM to provide UI presentation...
It's why I chuckle each and every time someone thinks that Android is magically all that much different. It's not.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas