Re: The worries of an early adpotor
Frogboy said:
sebt3 said:
Sheltem said:
Sure (at least I hope) there will be a pandora v2 but in 2 maybe 3 years. As the p&|a hardware will be very outdated compare to the other product around.
I wouldn't go quite that far. The Gamepark handhelds are severly outdated after 2-3 years but that's mostly because they are outdated when they come out. Pandora is pretty top of the line at the moment so I think that it will take longer than that. The PSP wouldn't be considered very outdated yet even though it's been out for four plus years. If it weren't for Pandora, it'd still be the most powerful handheld gaming device. I'd be perfectly happy if they didn't put out a new version until 4-5 years from now. It should have a nice long run.
In fact, I would go so far as to say, depending on how the P performs, I don't expect a major hardware revision for a very long time.
What exactly is there to revise? More ram could help for running linux, but a properly optimized linux distro probably mitigates that need. More speed? Again, just about any app properly compiled and optimized can run.
Emulators? Sure they could aim for smaller stepping stones like Dreamcast and PSP emulation, should they prove impossible on the current generation Pandora (which is still up in the air, looking into the long-term), but a full generation step in emulation capabilities would probably make more sense, as it would establish the next P as a true step up in capabilities.
So I guess that leaves games programmed for the P. While I'm not incredibly knowledgeable on homebrew games, it is my understanding that a well-programmed game will probably require a lot of work in order to hit the ceiling on the Pandora's graphics capabilities in a meaningful way. In other words, it would probably prove difficult to make a game that would require a more powerful system without simply raising the particle numbers, increasing reflection map resolution, and other things that simply require changing variables until the framerate starts to suffer.
The only thing I see that can give reason for better hardware sooner rather than much, much later, would be if commercial games really start to take off on the Pandora. And by take off, I mean, there would have to be enough developers that they are the final say in the direction the P goes, not the community. Not incredibly possible from this perspective, but I'm talking about years down the road, so you never know what might happen.
Of course, hardware revisions that don't involve the guts of the P are still possible. We are talking about a system that is running almost entirely off-the-shelf parts. I don't think it would be too unreasonable to expect, once they have sold a ridiculous amount later on in the future and the money and financial venture seems sound, to make a smaller, lighter Pandora that makes extra space by having custom parts built that combine features that are specially fitted for the new Pandora. All the custom built parts would be expensive as hell, but we're talking about an established company rolling in the money of their first successful business venture.
So all in all, expect little to no change for probably 8+ years. That's my guess.