Hands-On With The Tapwave Zodiac

Thanks to IGN Pocket for their hands-on preview of Tapwave's Zodiac handheld gaming system. The author suggests: "Whether or not Tapwave has the marketing muscle to steal away important market share from Nintendo remains to be seen, but at the very least the company has made a huge first impression when it comes to handheld system design." This Palm-compatible handheld has custom 3D game titles, including Spy Hunter, which IGN found "...very reminiscent of the PC's early years with the 3DFX Voodoo card", but overall, concerns about lack of "hard partnerships" with big publishers and the fact that the "price [$299-$399] definitely needs to come down" have the previewer worrying that this "great handheld design with incredible technical potential" may ultimately go neglected.

reminds of atari lynx..

[gl4ss]

superior but inferior(and there was already gp32 around). superior in hardware but expensive and jumping into a market that needs lots of $$$ up front for advertising if they want to make it happen in the long run(and they also need some games with long long long lasting appeal).

also having two different models, what were they thinking? i bet the games do look and feel nice though.

Re:I don't get it

[Enfors]

I'd agree with you - if playing games was the only thing this device was good for. But a PalmOS PDA with a good processor, 32 MB RAM, 480x320 screen and Bluetooth like this for USD 299 may well be viable even without a single game. Now, add the ability to play good games, and you've got something very interesting.

Granted, I don't think this device will cut into GBA's market segment. I think it will mostly be bought by people who would otherwise had bought some other PalmOS device. And remember, there already are a lot of interesting PalmOS games out there that work on this device too. Many of them are crap, but there are so many to choose from, there's bound to be some good ones around too.

Re:a lot of promise...

[Henry Salt]

To compete with GBA, someone needs to:

- Have the same price point (or within about $30 of the GBA)
- Have a significant technological lead
- Cement a lot of software partnerships before launch
- Probably cut a better licensing deal for the software developers than Nintendo offers

I love the GBA (when I can get it out of the hands of my son :-) ), but a little *viable* competition for Nintendo would really help in that end of the market.