Remember The Gizmondo?


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OMars

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Tiger telematics was about to release the gizmondo, when they announced the gizmondo widescreen. I think this played a part in the downfall of the console and company. I don't want this to happen to GamePark, so I wish they would come to their senses and release ONE really good system.

With these specs:
-320x240 res screen(atleast 3")
-250+mhz processor with gpu
-64MB RAM
-SD slot
-USB host
-uses two AA batteries
-lots of NAND memory
-good battery life
-cheap price tag ;)

There you have it Gamepark, get to building this! :p Naw, just kidding, but do you think they'll change there minds.

P.S. I have been changing my mind constantly about this topic, but this is my final idea.

EDIT: I have taken the acceleration part out because craigix believes it would drive the cost up.
 
What would you consider cheap bearing in mind that 3d hardware will push the price up beyond PSP prices as GP will have to make a profit on the hardware unlike sony etc.
 
craigix posted on Sep 7 2006 at 06:47 PM said:
What would you consider cheap bearing in mind that 3d hardware will push the price up beyond PSP prices as GP will have to make a profit on the hardware unlike sony etc.
Ok, take away the "2D/3D acceleration" part. This would still be the best system. ;)
 
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Sounds like a GP2X. And Tiger Telematics went down only because of all of those fiascos (can't remember exactly what happened).
 
Yeah, and they managed to sell it cheap thanks to this SmartAds garbage (that actually never got off the ground, but still). It also had a digital camera and GPS.. I don't think Gamepark could afford something like this.
 
OMars posted on Sep 7 2006 at 11:28 PM said:
I don't want this to happen to GamePark, so I wish they would come to their senses and release ONE really good system.

With these specs:
-320x240 res screen(atleast 3")


At least 3" ? 3" ?!? That is WAY too small, that is like GBA size. It should be at least 3.5" MINIMUM. Why be smaller than the GP2X screen is now? that makes no sense.
 
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BobBorakovitz posted on Sep 7 2006 at 07:26 PM said:
I just don't see anything but talk from them. I'll be surprised if they actually release something. As it stands, I still see no software planned for it
Stop with the superiority complex. At least they are PLANNING long before the release date. At least they aren't deciding to make changes 2 days after they hear about it. And I was around during the launch of the GP2X and I didn't hear any commerical games announced before its release.
 
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JaqMs posted on Sep 7 2006 at 07:20 PM said:
Sounds like a GP2X. And Tiger Telematics went down only because of all of those fiascos (can't remember exactly what happened).
GP2X doesn't have a gpu or good battery life(10 hours minimum).

DaveC posted on Sep 7 2006 at 08:01 PM said:
OMars posted on Sep 7 2006 at 11:28 PM said:
I don't want this to happen to GamePark, so I wish they would come to their senses and release ONE really good system.

With these specs:
-320x240 res screen(atleast 3")


At least 3" ? 3" ?!? That is WAY too small, that is like GBA size. It should be at least 3.5" MINIMUM. Why be smaller than the GP2X screen is now? that makes no sense.
There is no problem with a half inch loss... ;)
 
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JaqMs posted on Sep 7 2006 at 09:27 PM said:
BobBorakovitz posted on Sep 7 2006 at 07:26 PM said:
I just don't see anything but talk from them. I'll be surprised if they actually release something. As it stands, I still see no software planned for it
Stop with the superiority complex. At least they are PLANNING long before the release date. At least they aren't deciding to make changes 2 days after they hear about it. And I was around during the launch of the GP2X and I didn't hear any commerical games announced before its release.
JaqMs, please--CHILL! Gamepark is not a proven company--just as GPH was not before the release of the GP2X. You act as if they're God's gift to gaming, but you base it on very little. Yes, they're very responsive to the community, and it seems like they're listening. Still, they haven't changed a single spec yet due to community request. Remember, GPH was also very responsive before GP2X launched (even if their English wasn't quite as good). And there's no way to compare hardware (or software..) quality to GPH when Gamepark hasn't released anything yet.

Trust me, I want Gamepark to succeed as much as you. I think the Kids and mini have lots of potential, but I think you should be a bit less defensive of someone who's proven very little so far.
 
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OMars posted on Sep 7 2006 at 06:28 PM said:
With these specs:
-320x240 res screen(atleast 3")
-250+mhz processor with gpu
-64MB RAM
-SD slot
-USB host
-uses two AA batteries
-lots of NAND memory
...
EDIT: I have taken the acceleration part out because craigix believes it would drive the cost up.
OMars posted on Sep 7 2006 at 06:51 PM said:
craigix posted on Sep 7 2006 at 06:47 PM said:
What would you consider cheap bearing in mind that 3d hardware will push the price up beyond PSP prices as GP will have to make a profit on the hardware unlike sony etc.
Ok, take away the "2D/3D acceleration" part. This would still be the best system. ;)
Without 2D or 3D acceleration, it's just a GP2X with some mild overclocking. Even with a 300/400 MHz processor, as Craig and I discussed, not that much will really improve. Sure, you'll get better performance on some tasks, but most of the things the GP2X cannot do well require extreme 2D or 3D graphics operations that just don't go over well on an integer-only ARM9 processor which wasn't designed for such work.

What kind of things are those, you ask? Look at SquidgeSNES. It has no difficulty emulating the CPU and the audio is little problem; but the graphics core is very very slow. Rewriting it entirely in ARM9 ASM would be very, very difficult and take an extremely long amount of time. If the work of handling say, transparences, blitting of tiles and potentially even scaling and rotation were offloaded to a 2D GPU, performance would be dramatically higher.

PS1 emulation. The GP2X already has all the horsepower needed to emulate the PS1 CPU, which is the meat-and-potatoes of the emulation. However, it cannot by any means handle rendering a full frame with as many polys as the PS1's game library throws at it. PC emulators in the days of sub-600 MHz processors would never expect the main CPU to software-render the scene AND emulate the main CPU, that's quite a task-- instead, the most successful ones used OpenGL rendering on the graphics hardware of the machine to natively render a scene, interpreting the original graphical data from the PS1 game and translating to simple drawing instructions a PC's GPU understood. This is the same principle which would be utilized emulating the PS1 with a true 3D GPU, and simple to do since the PowerVR RS ("MBX Lite") in the MagicEyes VRENDER-3D or the Samsung S3C2460, whichever Gamepark decides on, has full support for the commonplace OpenGL-ES standard, and is over 7 times as powerful as the PS1's 3D hardware, as well as offering multiple features the PS1's polygon rendering engine didn't offer. There is no logical reason

Further benefits are that, also through the OpenGL-ES API, homebrew game developers can draw not a couple of hundred tops, to THOUSANDS of sprites on the display in a second or potentially in a FRAME, for incredibly immersive games without slowdown, as the main ARM9 core is not being burdened.

My reason for railing so strongly for the Samsung S3C2460 is that it offers not just the main ARM9 CPU, but also an AFP9 Floating Point / Vector processor that is nearly as powerful as the GP2X's ARM920T! Using a mix of integer and floating point math in a program equitably, this pair of processors can operate as quickly as a chip of nearly twice the clockrate without writing any special code like that to utilize the 940T, working in the same memory space, transparent to the user or even the programmer. Floating point support will supplement 3D acceleration in making ports of PC games like Quake I/II much faster (Quake I contains nearly NO integer-based code!) run far smoother-- 60 FPS would be no problem at all-- After speaking with Zodttd, he also stated he could utilize the AFP9 for emulation of the Geometry Transformation Engine (GTE).

The performance level of a ~500 Mhz ARM9 with proper utilization of integer and floating point processing units, plus powerful graphical acceleration is the only logical course of action, and makes a single high-clocked ARM9 (especially just 250 Mhz) and no acceleration a fairly ridiculous proposition-- especially when such chipsets do not cost nearly as much as they used to. Broadening the horizons of what can be done with a machine like the GP2X is much more important than putting the same old thing in a new case with a little incremental speed boost and calling it a day.

(My apologies for all who read this far, my little rant ran a little longer than originally anticipated. :lol: )
 
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OMars posted on Sep 8 2006 at 02:55 AM said:
There is no problem with a half inch loss... ;)

There is to me. I look at the small size of a GBA screen now and cringe. .5" is alot on a screen this size.

Why go backwards? That would be like going from a 200 MHz CPU back to a 166 MHz one. Never go back, that would be stupid.


Ahh yet another "future hardware" thread. It seems these days that we mostly talk about the next big thing ;)
 
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JaqMs posted on Sep 7 2006 at 09:27 PM said:
BobBorakovitz posted on Sep 7 2006 at 07:26 PM said:
I just don't see anything but talk from them. I'll be surprised if they actually release something. As it stands, I still see no software planned for it
Stop with the superiority complex. At least they are PLANNING long before the release date. At least they aren't deciding to make changes 2 days after they hear about it. And I was around during the launch of the GP2X and I didn't hear any commerical games announced before its release.

lol, if the system was anything more than talk, aka vaporware, I MIGHT be behind it. But as I've seen NOTHING but prototypes and NO software examples of anything running on it. Also, the fact that no-one knows if it's going to be just a commercial system, or if there going to be releasing an SDK. My problems with it are understandable.

Also, they're late, plain and simple. GP2x has been out for a long time now. First out the door is usually more popular. The XGP has been talked about since the GP2x was starting to be talked about. At least the GP2x actually EXISTS. And maybe they SHOULD make changes to it, it's not like they don't have time to do it, they haven't done a damn thing as far as I can see. That's just the problem, they aren't doing anything BUT planning. Plus, the GP2x isn't made to be a commercial system, just like the XGP probably isn't made for homebrew. Also, I didn't mention anything about commercial software, but there WERE plenty of homebrew shown before the GP2x's launch like Quake and the SNES emulator, just for 2 examples. Seen ANYTHING running on the GP2x yet? nope.

You are the most biased person I've ever talked to, everything from your mouth since you've been here has been anti gp2x. I am not anti XGP, but I've seen nothing to make me want it. It just looks like a crappy PSP ripoff. I have a PSP, I don't like it, so chances are, that I'm not going to want an XGP

it must be nice to be the most annoying person on the boards, congratulations twat
f'ing Jaqoff
 
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While I don't agree with JagMs's anti-GP2X, anti-emulator sentiment, I do look forward to the XGP design because it'll be much like the GP2X, but with many of the improvements I felt it should've had from the start, and a real opportunity for the community to influence the overall design so the end result is more the machine we'd all like to use, not a comprimise like I view the GP2X. Sure, the GP2X has a nice CPU but floating point capability would be a huge bonus. The 2D blitter is OK, but it can't handle the kind of heavy-blitting workload a dedicated 2D accelerator can, and that I come to expect from a reasonably modern 2D console. The stick is outright abysmal, and while it'd be amazing if GamePark decided on a nice D-Pad, even an analog stick would work better than what we have to use now.

As long as GP wants to take developing the XGP line is fine by me; it'll just mean they end up a more polished, well-designed and well-tested product, and probably cost less in the end. As the first GP2X run proved, rushing something to market is never the right approach.

I look forward with great anticipation to the XGP series' release, but in the meantime you'll see me spending a hell of a lot of time playing on and developing for my GP2X..
 
BobBorakovitz posted on Sep 8 2006 at 12:50 AM said:
lol, if the system was anything more than talk, aka vaporware, I MIGHT be behind it. But as I've seen NOTHING but prototypes and NO software examples of anything running on it. Also, the fact that no-one knows if it's going to be just a commercial system, or if there going to be releasing an SDK. My problems with it are understandable.

Also, they're late, plain and simple. GP2x has been out for a long time now. First out the door is usually more popular. The XGP has been talked about since the GP2x was starting to be talked about. At least the GP2x actually EXISTS. And maybe they SHOULD make changes to it, it's not like they don't have time to do it, they haven't done a damn thing as far as I can see. That's just the problem, they aren't doing anything BUT planning. Plus, the GP2x isn't made to be a commercial system, just like the XGP probably isn't made for homebrew. Also, I didn't mention anything about commercial software, but there WERE plenty of homebrew shown before the GP2x's launch like Quake and the SNES emulator, just for 2 examples. Seen ANYTHING running on the GP2x yet? nope.
Now, don't you start, Bob. We know that every XGP will be open to homebrew development. Just e-mail Gamepark, and they'll tell you that.

You're also wrong about them not showing software--they most certainly did.
XGP Kids apparently running FSMS32
XGPmini running GPcinema(wah?)
XGP running Quake 3, right?

Now, whether your comments about vaporware prove true, we'll see. They've been pretty bad at meeting release dates. You might be right about it being too late, too, but time will tell.
 
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shinneri posted on Sep 8 2006 at 12:33 AM said:
Now, don't you start, Bob. We know that every XGP will be open to homebrew development. Just e-mail Gamepark, and they'll tell you that.

You're also wrong about them not showing software--they most certainly did.
XGP Kids apparently running FSMS32
XGPmini running GPcinema(wah?)
XGP running Quake 3, right?

Now, whether your comments about vaporware prove true, we'll see. They've been pretty bad at meeting release dates. You might be right about it being too late, too, but time will tell.
That's exactly right; GP's said the machine would be open for homebrew development and an SDK would be provided. If they opt for a Linux-based OS, as they probably do given what we've seen run on it so far, the OS should be open-source as well due to the GPL.

As for being late, yes. But look at the GP2X's firmware fiasco-- it's nearly 2 months late now. I'd rather GP just take their time and do this right.
 
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Epicenter posted on Sep 8 2006 at 02:20 AM said:
That's exactly right; GP's said the machine would be open for homebrew development and an SDK would be provided. If they opt for a Linux-based OS, as they probably do given what we've seen run on it so far, the OS should be open-source as well due to the GPL.

If they go linux + decide to be pro-homebrew after all (wasn't that the point of contention that lead to the Gamepark/GPH split?), how different is the hardware? If the hardware's compatible, they could possibly have the whole 2X library open to them, no?
 
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ok, GPCinema & an SMS emulator, not too big of a deal, every handheld I have plays videos in some capacity and the GBA, GP32, Zodiac, N-Gage, PSP, NDS, & Gp2x all play SMS games fine. But who would want to play the SMS with an analog stick?! Not me, that's for sure. The only thing kinda cool is quake 3 which looks nice, but runs pretty slow and that's without even guns or enemies on the maps. It's just not enough to make me want to buy it. If they're actually trying to make it a commercial system, then why not show (or at least announce) some commercial games? Also, do you guys really think that the XGP will be able to compete comercially with Nintendo and Sony? Or will they go down in flames like the N-Gage, Zodiac, Gizmondo, etc. I'd put my money on it failing and you guys ending up owning a system with nothing different to play on it besides Quake 3.

I just don't see the XGP as being anything better than anything else already released or already dead. That's the same reason i didn't buy a Gizmondo. Nice hardware, but no good software to show for it. And look what happened there. At least the N-Gage had some fun games to play.

Is there any proof that it'll be open-sourced? I've seen nothing anywhere saying it is. Plus, I've got better things to do than track down information by email on a console that should've been out a long time ago. What's the release date? Anything announced yet? Probably not. I'm sticking with my vaporware conclusion unless proven otherwise.

One more thing. They're wasting their time and resources planning 3 different handhelds all with different capabilities. I don't see the homebrew scene getting together enough to have anywhere near the software library of the GP32 or Gp2x, even combined. Then you're gonna have programs that'll run on one, but not the other. You'll have developers developing for one of the 3 units out there. There's just not enough devs to go around, really.

I hope I'm wrong about some of this stuff, but I just seriously doubt it.

Maybe it'll come out by the time Duke Nukem Forever gets released :p
 
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