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GameStop To Build Its Own Gaming Tablet?
itwbennett writes "GameStop has been on a roll lately, purchasing both Impulse and Spawn Labs in the past week. Now it's ready to go after those casual gaming dollars, but first it needs to put a gaming tablet in your hands. GameStop President Tony Bartel told CNBC that his chain is going to start selling tablets later this year: 'If we can work with our partners and the OEMs and they come up with a great tablet that is enabled with a great gaming experience and coupled with a bluetooth controller, then there's no need to go out and develop our own. But if we can't find one that's great for gaming, then we will create our own.'"
(actually a legitimate question)
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The more legitimate question is, "Will it run Battletoads?"
GameStop? Really?
My only responses to this are disbelief and laughter.
...a company that excels at selling used games knows what it takes to build a tablet that can play games they have never sold.
And they can do it better and more cost-effectively than the dozens and dozens of companies that have at least announced Android tablets with a huge head start on Gamestop...namely, they have at least hollowed out a piece of plastic or metal and inserted piece of plexiglas into it to demonstrate how serious they are at entering the tablet market.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Does anyone here think this will make it?
Tablet/Controller is too small to play with friends (unless everyone involved had their own and they just link up together for any/all games) and too large and bulky to play on the go. What's the absent niche that they hope to fill with this?
Bye!
The main thing for the Gamestop demographic is price sensitivity. Gaming implies Tegra or powervr.
My guess is they'll do Android. While iOS is arguably better for games (more of a reasonable expectation of hardware for example) Android is actually a platform they could develop on. My guess is it'll end up being Tegra based, and they'll throw in some sort of optional off screen control system ala the PSPhone.
I always thought of Gamestop as that company that screwed the industry by undercutting new game sales with used game sales, while simultaneously screwing the consumer by selling used games at too high a price yet giving their customers shite deals on trade-ins. Never thought they were good for the industry any more that your shady local/regional vending machine company that forces all their competition out of some given area but only owns no more than a handful of decrepit arcade machines rotating among every small business in their area. ("Hey Shady's replaced sped-up Ms. Pac-Man with Time Killers! Awesome!") So it would be cool IMHO to see them take a real stake in things. Please, Gamestop, make your own gaming tablet. (WTF do you know about that anyway?) My advice? Take a pinch of N-gage, a dash of 3DO and burn a black turtleneck.
A bluetooth controller?! How many hands does this require? Are you going to have to put the tablet on a stand to be able to use the controller?
What the hell?
Too bad you will only have access to the whole title list if you PREODER FROM GAMESTOP NOW. If you dont you just get games that didnt sell on the virtua boy.
Sony and Nintendo hang onto their franchises, they should let them be multiplatform, of course, they do that, and sales of their hardware HALVE instantly.
I like the Dual shock 3 controller, its bluetooth, it SHOULD work with iOS and Android devices. Sony should allow it to be used, surely its just a matter of "giving it a driver" in the Operating Systems, and game developers writing code for a Dual Shock 3 button layout?
You'd put your iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone... or Android devices on a surface, and use the controller. It would be perfect! An iPad for example, the second generation is "Xbox 360 power", without any fan, it runs on its battery, and its INCREDIBLY THIN. It would be better than "the real thing".
I dont at all mind "touchscreen gaming", however, yes, there are certain things that dedicated buttons do better, no kidding. If Sony wanted to somehow "license" the controller, charging a set amount to large game makers like Gameloft, well, we'd be complaining about it no doubt, "it should be free", it would be a revenue stream for them, with "the drivers" built in to the smartphones operating system, free for users.
Even if you didnt already have a PS3, or Dual Shock 3 controller, what would you rather have, some knockoff "iPlay 4000" bluetooth controller made from cheap white plastic, or use Sony's long established bluetooth controller, with motion sensing, vibration, trigger style buttons.... and that gamers likely already own!
Its win-win for everyone.
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That's why Sony created the Xperia Play - http://psp2roundup.blogspot.com/2011/04/xperia-play-adverts-they-keep-on-coming.html - does it all in one phone!
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
Wish I could mod you "funny" and post here too ;-)
:-)
Oh Sony! You mess EVERYTHING up! TV's, "LCD aint going nowhere!", music, "the kids dont want that emm peee free! They want a proprietary format, on tiny discs and made by SONY, we're cool, right?", to phones "yeah, who needs modern devices?"
The Xperia Play, that thing that got like, 6 out of 10 on Engadgets review?
Nothing can compare to controls AWAY from the screen you're watching.
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It's a legitimate idea. Video games will go the way of the DVD as well and be streamed over the internet. Business models will need to adapt.
Why doesn't GameStop just buy OnLive and make a special tablet to play their service? Gamestop could promote this as a feature of the play tablet to allow play of many major titles on a portable device.
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
I'd be surprised if they found success. As near as I can tell, Gamestop's only area of expertise is in acting as a middleman selling used product. I'm over-simplifying, but they basically have the same skill set as some guy on ebay or at a flee market with only a change in scale.
They appear to have no experience in actually producing or even marketing anything whatsoever. They have no experience designing/marketing/distributing consoles, phones, hand-held game devices, games or software. So we are to assume that they will compete in the chaotic and fast moving phone/tablet market against seasoned major hardware producers like Apple and seasoned software producers like Microsoft and Google. I don't think they understand the market they want to be in other than that it is currently hot and growing. They will not be up against lucky incompetents and they don't seem to be aware they are really late to the party.
Plus they have no marketing experience. The used games sales engine functions my latching onto the game and console producers own marketing like a parasite. They've never actually promoted their own products. There is also a negative legacy here. I think we can safely assume Gamestop will not be producing any appreciable amount of first party titles, meaning they will have to rely on other companies' software. I can't foresee them getting any exclusivity agreements from software companies that likely see them as a parasite that has been siphoning off their new game sales for years. Not with out piles and piles of cash.
They purchased a digital distribution company so I guess we can give them that they now have some experience in that. Although that company's focus was on the PC games market, a market that they abandoned long ago. If I had to guess, I'd say they will make little effective use of that. And I sort of doubt there is a talent pool available from that purchase to develop the things they need to develop.
I think they'll probably just take another company's tablet product, install some redundant and probably buggy download service on it along with a gamestop OS skin or something. It'll be the product equivalent of a wet fart, personally unpleasant but not enough people will know about it to be to embarrassing.
Gamestop hired several of my friends in Texas late last year - but they were all Windows Mobile 6 developers for enterprise stuff. Combine that with the fact you can develop for the XBox and Windows Mobile 7 in the same solution, and it seems like that is where they will go. I hope it works out for them.. but I don't have high expectations of Windows Mobile 7.
Never heard of GameStop until I started visiting /. so why should I exactly care as a foreigner? At least iPads and Android-powered tablets are much more widely available.
In fact, why do we really need a gaming tablet when current tablets could surely get some add-ons that allow for better gaming? An external Bluetooth device was mentioned, couldn't this work with existing tablets?
I am not devoid of humor.