| Gizmondo |
Website Links For Gizmondo |
Information AboutGizmondo |
The Gizmondo is a Handheld Gaming Console with GPRS and GPS technology, which was manufactured by Tiger Telematics . Launched in 2005, the Gizmondo sold poorly, and by February of 2006 the company was forced into bankruptcy and discontinued the Gizmondo. UK RELEASE Gizmondo was released in the United Kingdom on 19 March , 2005 , initially priced at £140. Units enabled with "Smart Adds" (see below) had a rebate of up to £100. The Gizmondo was available from the Gizmondo flagship store on London 's Regent Street , via Gizmondo's online shop, and other highstreet and online retailers (such as Argos , Dixons , Currys , John Lewis among others). The directors of the company at the time were , who was the head of the company's Smart Ads operation; David Levett , chief software architect; Rich Clayton , the company's US producer; Johan Enander , Head of Security; and Peter Uf . U.S. RELEASE In the United States the Gizmondo launched on October 22 , 2005 . It was available only through Gizmondo’s website or at one of several kiosks located in shopping malls. Plans to distribute the handheld through other retailers never materialized. FUNCTIONALITY AND SPECIFICATIONS The Gizmondo includes a GPS module for In-car Navigation which could also be used to track player movement in Real-time for Multiplayer games. The Gizmondo also contains a VGA camera mounted on the rear of the device. It can send SMS / MMS messages and email and can play MP3 / WAV / MIDI music, WMV / MPEG4 videos and a variety of 2D / 3D games. The Gizmondo can play Games , Music tracks and Movies , take and store digital Photos and be used like a Mobile Phone to send Text , Multimedia and E-mail messages. It lacks the ability to send or receive voice calls. The phone service to enable people to send messages is being provided by pre-pay Vodafone accounts bundled in with the device. It can also access the Global Positioning System for use as a navigation aid. There were plans to support a variety of location-based services, for example. GPRS and Bluetooth wireless connections were intended to provide multiplayer gaming. The Gizmondo also had a feature called "Smart Adds." In exchange for a discount on the Gizmondo (of $170 in the US, £100 in the UK), up to three advertisements per day would be displayed on the handheld’s screen. Although the ads would not interrupt game play or other functions of the unit, the user would be forced to watch them before going on to the next function or shutting down the device. Gizmondo is powered by a 400 MHz ARM9 processor and has a 2.8 inch 320x240 pixels TFT screen and an NVIDIA 128 bit GeForce 3D 4500 GPU featuring a programmable pixel shader, hardware transform engine and 1280KB of embedded memory. The GPU was added relatively late in the system's design, causing some delays for launch titles and the system, as they were redesigned. The system's appearance and ergonomics were created by Industrial Designer Rick Dickinson , who worked in a similar role on various Sinclair products such as the ZX Spectrum . GIZMONDO WIDESCREEN Tiger Telematics planned to release a widescreen Gizmondo in 2006. It was intended to have a larger screen and upgrades like wi-fi and TV-OUT support. The widescreen Gizmondo was announced just a few weeks before the US launch of the Gizmondo, possibly prompting some potential customers to not buy the Gizmondo, and instead wait for the improved model. The Gizmondo widescreen is an example of Vaporware . CONTROVERSY In October 2005, shortly after Gizmondo was released in America, a Swedish yellow-page paper printed a story linking Stefan Eriksson and two other Swedish Gizmondo Europe Executives to the Swedish crime ring "Uppsalamaffian" ( Uppsala Mafia .) The paper investigated a six months' loss of 200 million dollars, exhibiting large payouts to later bankrupt entities. Further, the trio's felon history was revealed such as Eriksson's 10-year prison sentences in 1993/94, for, among other things, conspiracy to pass counterfeit currency and attempted fraud, and the fact that Johan Enander was being wanted by the Swedish police. In light of these findings Eriksson and others resigned. One of those resignations came from Carl Freer, the Chairman of the board and a director, who co-owned along with Eriksson Northern Lights Software Limited . Northern Lights was paid a large sum of money to create Chicane and Colors, two Gizmondo games that were actually developed by Gizmondo Europe itself. Freer paid the money back to Gizmondo in order to stop an investigation into the matter. The Gizmondo company itself denied knowing anything about Eriksson's past. Eriksson also raced at the 24 Hours Of Le Mans in the Gizmondo sponsored Ferrari 360 Modena GTC in 2005 but would retire with mechanical troubles. Enander started his career as a local bouncer at various restaurants in Uppsala and then rose to become the main enforcer and Debt Collector of Uppsalamaffian. He was sentenced to 6+ years for a series of violent crimes. In December 2003 he was again sentenced to one and a half years for physical assault on a woman, upon release, he was assigned as Head of security. Another management employee was Peter Uf who was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for similar charges to Eriksson, namely attempting to defraud 22 million Kronor from the Swedish Bank Giro Central. Uf was the other executive to resign. Gizmondo is currently under investigation in the UK for approximately £25-30 million owed to the Inland Revenue . On February 21 , 2006, Eriksson lost control of a million dollar Ferrari Enzo sports car which he illegally drove while drunk on the road in California, a car that was claimed by the Bank of Scotland during the bankruptcy of Tiger Telematics. Eriksson is currently being held without bail pending a court case due April 12, 2006. BANKRUPTCY On January 23 , 2006 , the UK based arm, Gizmondo Europe (GE) decided to enter into administration ( Bankruptcy ). The embattled Gizmondo hand held gaming device hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars before filing for bankruptcy: in 2004 Tiger Telematics reported a loss of $99 million, and between January and September of 2005 they lost $210 million. Soon after Gizmondo retail locations in both the US and the UK closed, and the Gizmondo website was shut down. The game development arm of Gizmondo also went out of business. The following month in the same week as the Ferrari crash, Freer, Lilley, Levett and Clayton have founded a virtual network operator called Xero Mobile which is similar to business in terms of business model to the Smart Ads. 1 GAMES At the time of the US launch, fourteen games were available for the Gizmondo.
Although more games were in development, the company’s bankruptcy prevented release of further titles. A list of Gizmondo games can be found Here . The most anticipated Gizmondo game, Colors , was never released due to the company’s bankruptcy. Some dedicated Gizmondo fans have created Homebrew games. Links to Gizmondo homebrew sites can be found below. COMPETITION The Gizmondo competed for marketshare with handheld consoles by Nintendo (the DS and Game Boy Advance ) and Sony (the PlayStation Portable ). KEY MAPPING Up = 0026 Right = 0027 Down = 0028 Left = 0025
REFERENCE EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|