Gpx2 Gameabout Interview


polooo2

Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2002
Messages
199
Both console and a PMP, GPX2 sets on to go retail within this year
Interview with Bum-Hong Lee from GPH

Early next year will be an unprecedented market war for hanheld consoles in Korea as Reigncom, Hyunwon, Gamepark and Gamepark Holdings will each release a handheld. And of them all GPH is already in finalizing stage and is about to go retail.
We've arranged a meeting with chief director Bum-Hong Lee of GPH.

PMP and games
Bum-Hong explains that GPX2 is both console and a PMP in one machine. In percentage of importance, PMP will be about half, games will have around 30~40% importance and the rest will be texts, image viewers and other various multimedia functions.
02(54).jpg


Bum-Hong says that GPX2 is not to be in a direct competition with hardware giants like Nintendo and Sony who's been obsolutely dominating the handheld industry, but rather to compete with PMP's that are being sold domestically at the moment. As GPX2 has many capability and power compared to other PMP's within the price range, he is confident that GPX2 will do well against them.


Edge in price and performence
What would be the strengths of GPX2, which is set to compete with PMPs? Price and general apeal, Bum-Hong says. GPX2 is to be around KRW180000 (USD180), and even if it were to get slightely expensive, they do not wish to price it more than KRW200000 (USD200). It's not only affordable, also by using standard AA batteries and SD memories, so even if a person was to buy a full set for GPX2 would not cost him extra wad of cash. And to achieve such price, we wish to minimize distribution margin as much as possible by selling on-line. They wanted to tackle the market with affordable price by eliminating the middle man which increases the price of the unit.

03(51).jpg



Consideration for games
GPX2's strength is not only a PMP functionality and price, it's gaming aspect is also a part of it's core design. Most of PMP companies have hard time designing their machine with game in mind, says Bum-Hong while showing us the machine.
The machine chief-director showed us had button layout that looked like that of Nintendo's but their stick had fantastic feel and control to it.

04(46).jpg



As seen in the picture above, GPX2 has a design cell phones or PMP manufacturing companies will not easily choose. First of all, the unit is not quite that small like other PMP's, and certain thickness is also required for such devices like stick to have certain good feel to it. It is certainly different from game phones or other portable players which uses metal-dome unlike GPX2 with membrane casing.


As much peripheral support as possible
When GP2X changed it's name to GPX2, they added TV-OUT and extra RAM on their machine which was often requested by users, and there also was many unseen changes that was made on GPX2. They created a cable that is to be used for TV-OUT, and they also made an extra order for parts so the users can have easy time making part replacement himself. GPH is also improving GPX2's LCD so it wont scratch like GBA does. They are also planning for GPX2 carrying case. As said, GPH is trying their best to make life easy for users of GPX2.


05(35).jpg



Importance of contents over hardware
Although GPH is make preperation for many things, they are still having difficulty of strengthning it's media contents. GPH cannot afford much money to invest in contents development, so Linux was their way to partially solve this problem. Open source will attract many different users of different preferences of various contents. They are at the moment reviewing the possibility of paying license fee for emulations.

It is only the beggining
GPX2 developement is uder very tight schedule, and as they were making changes mainly on the various user request, Bum-Hong says the had alot to discuss. It was not a technical problem or issue, but rather of manpower as the company was founded on very small number of people. But he says the worst of the problem was fighting over urges to use the latest technology vs finalizing the hardware and going retail.

06(22).jpg


(Author opinion goes here) blah blah
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Done.

Last one has a critical translation error.

Post this one plz.
 
polooo2 posted on Aug 31 2005 at 03:09 PM said:
Although GPH is make preperation for many things, they are still having difficulty of strengthning it's media contents. GPH cannot afford much money to invest in contents development, so Linux was their way to partially solve this problem. Open source will attract many different users of different preferences of various contents. They are at the moment reviewing the possibility of paying license fee for emulations.
Ehm, what the heck does that mean? License fee...hmm..

Oh, a very nicely translated article, thanks pooloo2!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Licence fee nice one! That would stop making it worthwhile to upgrade from the GP32
 
Koreans are just as confused atm, but they are speculating that GPH wants to pay license fee to companies like Nintendo or Sega for emulation so they can go official rather than staying underdog- without infringing copyright laws.
 
Cyclops posted on Aug 31 2005 at 06:42 PM said:
Licence fee nice one! That would stop making it worthwhile to upgrade from the GP32

I think you misinterpreted that.

They are probably thinking about paying emulator developers a license fee to bundle their programs with the GPX2. Or something to that effect. It wouldn't make much sense in the way you interpreted it.

Also, this is GPH after all, they wouldn't do such a thing!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for this new translation polooo2!! It's always great to get this kind of news.

I still hope the "license fee" thing clears up o_O
 
Segata Sanshiro posted on Aug 31 2005 at 06:14 PM said:
Thanks for this new translation polooo2!! It's always great to get this kind of news.

I still hope the "license fee" thing clears up o_O


Their direct word is "paying license fee" not "charging license fee" (I mistranslated this the first time so I had to repost with correct translation) so I believe it has nothing to do with us paying them for emulators but rather GPH paying someone for emulation/emulator.

That 'someone' is yet to ponder of, though. I've no idea, Koreans got no idea.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
mattmagoo posted on Aug 31 2005 at 07:02 PM said:
HAHA Bum Hong

I was waiting to see who was the most immature
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jarska333 posted on Aug 31 2005 at 04:50 PM said:
Mr. Lee seems like a symphatethic guy. :)
Yep, he is. We talk a lot when we meet together in Seoul last year, and who knows maybe it was me who convinced him to choose the open source and emulation path for their company ;) as at that time they didn't have any idea about the GP32 open source scene: emulators and games. :)


Dryer Lint posted on Aug 31 2005 at 06:03 PM said:
Cyclops posted on Aug 31 2005 at 06:42 PM said:
Licence fee nice one! That would stop making it worthwhile to upgrade from the GP32

I think you misinterpreted that.

They are probably thinking about paying emulator developers a license fee to bundle their programs with the GPX2. Or something to that effect. It wouldn't make much sense in the way you interpreted it.

Also, this is GPH after all, they wouldn't do such a thing!
Agree. I am pretty sure this is what he meant.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Once again, thank polooo2 for the great translation and info.

Like everyone else, I can't wait to get one of these. It seems very thoughtfully designed.
 
yeah, very thoughtfully designed!!
i love it..and that color..is SO awesome!!!!

i love you GPH!!!
 
Prophet posted on Aug 31 2005 at 09:26 PM said:
Once again, thank polooo2 for the great translation and info.

Like everyone else, I can't wait to get one of these. It seems very thoughtfully designed.



No probs. ;)

Only takes 30 minutes of my time and thounsands gets to read it. I think that's worth the exchange. :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
After seeing the video this morning and the pics of graigs, i really, really REALLY want a GPX2. I think it may be a case of time to delve into my student loan. If only I knew the final cost with VAT. Thats the thing i dislike most about craigs site, the price stated isnt inclusive of VAT, so it gets bumped up considerably.

Can anyone be arsed to work out the cost in GBP, inclusive of VAT?
 
Back
Top