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Portables (Games) Handhelds Entertainment Games Hardware

Palm OS Based Gaming Device Nears Release 141

Posted by Hemos from the going-after-the-sp dept.
Sokie writes "During the past few weeks Tapwave, a startup founded by a couple former Palm employees, has been slowly unveiling the features of their upcoming Helix (Flash heavy link) handheld gaming device. So far, the specs include a 480x320 16-bit color display, dual Secure Digital (SD) slots, Bluetooth connectivity for wireless multiplayer (Wi-Fi available through SDIO), multiple analog controls including triggers, ATI Imageon graphics, and dual rechargable lithium ion batteries (no word yet on battery life). In addition to some cool sounding hardware, several prominent game companies are already signed on to develop games for the Helix, including Activision and Midway. It will also run traditional Palm apps like Calendar and Address Book. Tapwave will continue to unveil a new feature each week for the next few weeks, and the product is supposed to launch in September or October and retail for about $299. PC World has some additional info."
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Palm OS Based Gaming Device Nears Release More

Palm OS Based Gaming Device Nears Release

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  • Meh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by luekj ( 692478 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:47PM (#6577045) Journal
    Who cares if Tapware is putting out a 'Gaming Device'.

    Everyone knows you need developer back up to get anywhere in the 'gaming handheld' business.

    Oh well, hopefully the controls are good enough that it could encourage some good homebrew/port games

    fp!

    • Re:Meh (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cloudless.net ( 629916 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:04PM (#6577143) Homepage
      I had the same concern but the article says:
      "...several prominent game companies are already signed on to develop games for the Helix, including Activision and Midway."

      Now I am just waiting for Square Enix to join, but it probably won't happen.

      • Re:Meh (Score:4, Interesting)

        by luekj ( 692478 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:13PM (#6577179) Journal
        A lot of developers also apparently signed on for the GP32 like Capcom and SNK [lik-sang.com] but nothing seemed to happen outside of the korean market.

        The one thing that would seem to entice more developers is having the device based on a system (like palm os, coincidentally) that would potentially be future cell phone tech and thus be easily portable to the lucrative cell market.

        If some synergy between handheld/cell software got going, it could get interesting and actually non-spartan for this device and devices like it.

        • Re:Meh (Score:3, Informative)

          by cloudless.net ( 629916 )
          Althought there are some Palm OS phones on the market, Palm OS is not really suitable for cell phones. The Palm OS interface heavily relies on the touchscreen, while most cell phones have only the numeric pad and a few buttons.

          Currently the most popular mobile gaming platform is J2ME, but it is slow and has too many limitations. I guess we'll have to wait at least a few more years before mobile gaming gets mainstream.
          • I have no idea why you think PalmOS isn't suited for cell phones. The Kyocera 7135 and the Treo line all have buttons for dialing and dialing alone, no need to use the touch screen.

  • This sounds really cool and all... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fishynet ( 684916 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:48PM (#6577051) Journal
    But who are they targeting with this product? Who wants an expensive "gaming" device?

    • Re:This sounds really cool and all... (Score:5, Informative)

      by enjo13 ( 444114 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:03PM (#6577131) Homepage
      I've had a couple of long conversations with the Tapwave people. They are most definitely targetting the 25+ group who see the Gameboy as a toy. The device is pretty compelling.. it offers PDA functionality in a pretty slick form factor that wouldn't look out of place in your average office or work environment.

      What you have to realize is that they're not looking to take over the gameboy market. They don't need to sell a bajillion units to succeed in their business model.. their goals are to find a niche market and I think they have a great chance to do pretty well.

      • Re:This sounds really cool and all... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:56PM (#6577378) Homepage
        That may be so, but I'm in the 25+ group (and then some), and I *am* self-conscious and sensitive enough about my professional image to be reluctant to pull out a GameBoy Advanced - it's too toylike. But I have no such qualms about pulling out a GBA SP. And I'd rather have my game accessory be physically distinct from my PDA, because I'm usually playing the GBA in slow moments, when I may need to grab my PDA quickly for something work-related. The advantages of having 2 discrete devices far outweights the benefits of convergence in this case.

        I don't see much of a future for either this or the N-Gage, to be honest. I think Nintendo has more to worry about from Sony. But the truth is, too, I see handheld gaming as hitting a plateau: there's only so many compelling titles for those games, and I predict we're going to see consumer behaviour focus on larger screens again in the near to middle term.
      • They are most definitely targetting the 25+ group who see the Gameboy as a toy.
        I don't know anyone who dismisses the GBA as a toy who doesn't also dismiss PDAs as toys. Any gamer worth their salt knows that the GBA(sp) is a very capable portable gaming device and if they haven't bought one it's not because it won't double as their diary.
        • Uh, please differentiate "toy" from "capable portable gaming device".

          It's a toy. My Palm is a tool. Neither of these terms are perjorative.
    • But who are they targeting with this product?

      I think they're aiming to cut into Nokia's market for their upcoming N-Gage

  • the Sony PSP? [zdnet.co.jp]

  • Every possible iteration of an idea. (Score:5, Funny)

    by lifebouy ( 115193 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:51PM (#6577067) Journal
    First there was the gameboy advance with its PIM cartridge. Now there is a palm device that plays games. Why oh why cant they all just get along?

  • Good luck against Nintendo & Sony! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:53PM (#6577075)
    I have my doubts this new machine will be successful.

    The reason is simple: you need high-quality first- and third-party games in order to make it popular--and I haven't heard of such announcements from the makers of Helix.

    Nintendo's Game Boy series have done well not only because of the fairly wide range of games developed in-house, but also games developed by third parties. Sony's upcoming PSP machine will likely get quite widely support from third parties, too, given Sony's marketing muscle.

    • Re:Good luck against Nintendo & Sony! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:12PM (#6577174)
      ...you need high quality...games in order to make it popular...

      Gameboy has done well because of battery power, plain and simple. It doesn't matter *how* l33t the games are, if you run out of juice after a half-hour.

      • I have news for you.

        The arrival of the Pocket Monsters (aka Pokemon) games in the middle 1990's was a huge factor in keeping the original Game Boy going a lot longer than it should have. I think if it weren't for the success of Pokemon Nintendo would have given serious thought about phasing out this platform.

        After all, Sega had a serious competitor to Game Boy, and it didn't last that long.

        • After all, Sega had a serious competitor to Game Boy, and it didn't last that long.

          You truly consider the Game Gear (I assume that is what you are alluding to) to have been serious competition in the long run? Although I have one and play with it on occasion, it is significantly larger (and heavier), eats batteries at a furious pace, and despite a few game titles, wasn't really a match for the Game Boy's catalog game for game. I don't recall costs at the time of release, perhaps someone can throw in t

          • I don't remember an adapter to play Sega console games on the Game Gear. I think you might be thinking of the Sega Nomad -- a portable Sega Genesis, that played their console games (but not any game gear ones)
            • Nope, he's correct.
              The game gear is basically a portable Master System. There was an adaptor to allow playing of SMS tapes.
              The nomad was an even worse flop than the GG, you look at the cartridge wrong and fucking thing crashes. Still a nice Sega artifact to have though ;)
      • This argument doesn't sound right.
        "It doesn't matter if you have battery life and good games, but NO control pad".
        Thus, Gameboy has done well because of its control pad. And .

        However, it's much more difficult to have good games than decent battery life (which is important).(However, you still can fsck that up, too, and the controller)

    • Re:Good luck against Nintendo & Sony! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:18PM (#6577208)
      I think you're missing the point. TapWave are hoping to piggyback on the already successful Palm platform.

      The Palm family already includes a bunch of market 'targeted' devices...like all of marvellous line of Sony Palm handhelds, smartphones (GPRS/CMDA) from Handspring/Kyocera/Samsung and various 'rugedised' Palm devices for the industrial market.

      I see Tapwave as just another Palm device that fills a certain market that's been missing from the Palm picture to date...that's serious handheld gaming - there are plenty of good 'lite' Palm games already - but nothing that can hold a candle to the GBA gaming experience imho.

      Tapwave will hopefully change that and as long as they can supply several games that show off their hardware and keep the price at a sane level I can't see why these guys won't do well.

      Hell, even the fact their device will do portrait/landscape display is enough to convince me to buy one...(but then I'm a Palm geek that works in a company writing Palm s/w so I might be biased).

      Yours anonymously.
    • Does the terminology open architecture ring a bell?

      Or do you really have no faith in amerature game developers to create some fun and addictive games for handhelds?

      I say Good luck nintendo and sony!

  • Worthless now, but wait a while (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rice_web ( 604109 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:53PM (#6577076)
    I just don't see this as a "good buy" right now; why put money down on one of these when the PSP is on the way (albeit next year) or when the GBA is a stellar system? Yes, your calendars, your notepad, and all your other programs can go with you, but if games are in mind, this isn't the best out there.

    I think handheld computing could take off (again), so the question becomes: wait for a system with the power of my former desktop or buy now and get a system that might be as useless as today's PDA (well, it wouldn't be useless, but it's just such a damn hassle right now). I'd personally wait; I'll just keep using my Palm IIIxe on occasion.

  • great! Now I know what to do in meetings (Score:4, Funny)

    by civilengineer ( 669209 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:54PM (#6577080) Homepage Journal
    Just play on it and act like I'm taking notes. Nod occasionally when I win or lose a game to let the speaker know I'm hearing.

  • So.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by bmantz65 ( 642864 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:54PM (#6577083) Journal
    its basically a Palm without the 'productivity' software?

  • Late 2003 eh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordoftheFrings ( 570171 ) <(null) (at) (fragfest.ca)> on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:54PM (#6577085) Homepage
    The website says that it will be released in Late 2003, meanwhile, the site itself is not complete (many links say In Two Weeks, etc) AND there are no pictures of the device at all. The good news is, I hear it's shipping with Duke Nukem Forever.
    • the site itself is not complete (many links say In Two Weeks, etc)

      That's intentional; they want people to come back each week and see what new feature has been added.

      I hear it's shipping with Duke Nukem Forever

      Yeah, and it will also dual boot Debian as well.

      Jack

  • What about the children?!?!? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gooru ( 592512 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:07PM (#6577157)
    If we assume that the primary gamers are young, then what's the point of this? I somehow can't imagine an eight year kid with a long list of contacts and the need to have a datebook. Sure, a good portion of gamers are also older with more responsibilities, but how often do thirty-somethings pull out GameBoys? It has got to be nearly as embarassing. I'm not replacing my coffee break with playing on my Palm. My boss would think I was going crazy.
    • Maybe they're trying to win over the people that play video games on their cell phones... I've seen some of those games, and they're just plain nasty. So, they're thinking, "Hey, a PDA is a productivity device, just like a cell phone -- maybe we can put some games on it and call it a portable gaming system!"

      The problem is, people don't *WANT* to multi-task -- they want one device that does one thing WELL, not one device that does a bunch of things crappily.

      • I play games on my cell phone when there's no one else around to talk to while I'm on my smoke breaks. I play games on my GBA-SP when I'm at the laundrymat or waiting in line at the movie theater (or in the movie theater waiting for the previews to start) or basically anywhere else I go to specifically knowing I'll have some time on my hands. I don't bring my GBA to work because they frown on even the cell phone games (and would definitely frown on one of these things).

    • If we assume that the primary gamers are young, then what's the point of this? I somehow can't imagine an eight year kid with a long list of contacts and the need to have a datebook.

      The statements above completely undercut your argument. The assumption that gamers are children is wrong.

      Most gamers are adults. According to the recently renamed Entertainment Software Association (formerly the IDSA -- Interactive Digital Software Assoc.) the average gamer is 29 years old [theesa.com]. About 2/3 of gamers are over t

  • 16-bit?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by d_redguy ( 611579 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:11PM (#6577168)
    This is a 16-bit system? Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the GBA in my hot little hands (Advance Wars 2 is the shiznit, btw) a 32-bit system? So why am I impressed again? Oh, I know, it's their content-free Flash website that took to long to download even with my trusty T3 line pumping into work. Spare me.

    • Re:16-bit?? (Score:3, Informative)

      by mrseigen ( 518390 )
      The display is 16-bit color. The ARM processor will likely be similar to the one in your GBA. What I'm really wondering is if someone will port Progress Quest.
    • that flash movie on their web site is the most poorly designed piece of flash I've ever experienced..

    • Re:16-bit?? (Score:2, Informative)

      by jameslore ( 219771 )
      As far as I am aware, the proc is 32bit (ARM) and the display is 16bit (== ~64k colours).

      The main difference between this and an ARM powered Palm (from what I've read anyway) is that this has a custom gaming API and the extended hardware to turn it into a games machine (as some ppl have noted, Palm games tend to be on the simple side (speaking as a Tungsten owner)).

      • Re:16-bit?? (Score:3, Informative)

        by ardiri ( 245358 )
        the tapwave unit supports both 8bpp and 16bpp graphics (developer can choose using API call). this means 256 and 64k colors. nothing new on this end - the device however is 480x320 in landscape mode.

        it is no different from a Tungsten|T unit technically. however, it does use an accellerated 2D graphics chip and there is an API specifically targeted that uses the hardware accelleration = good. the device also ships with the X-forge engine (for those developers too lazy to write their own 3d engine), so, that
    • It's sad to see how many people equate the number of bits the processor is based around with anything other than the number of bits that it handles.

      32-bit doesn't instantly mean a machine is better than a 16-bit machine. It simply doesn't. The problem is that as certain popular processors evolved (Intel x86 for example), people equated the change from 16 to 32-bit with "better". People who did are just victims (suckers?) of not-so-clever marketing.

      Personally, I think a PalmOS based handheld gaming platfor
    • It's the graphics capabilities, the sound capabilities, etc, that determine how cool a system is.

      Back in the 1980s, Sega developed the marketting technique of 16-bit. Their Sega Genesis was better than the NES not because it was 16-bit, but because it had better capabilities. IE: it had a dedicated Z80 (8-bit CPU!) for sound, and its PPU could do more interesting things with more sprites and more colours than the NES' PPU.

      The SNES is the same thing: a custom Sony CPU with wavetable support for sound, an

  • oh for shame on them... (Score:4, Funny)

    by reiggin ( 646111 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:11PM (#6577172)
    Now I am forced to upgrade AGAIN just after I poured all this money into my color Zire so I could finally play Giraffe and Minesweeper like I thought they were meant to be played. But now they're telling me that I can play Tetris multiplayer and be the envy of all my Clie lovin' friends?!? Well, hell yeah, I'll buy it!

    What's that? Something about a GBA for 1/3 the price?? LALALALALALALALALALALA!!!!! I can't hear you! lalalalalalalala...........

  • yesterday I was at Babbages and they had pre-orders in the catalog for nokia n-gage, along with nintendo sp and sony psp, the next 6-12 months looks to be very intersting!

    Frankly, I'm partial to this palm based idea. A true gaming-form factor PDA would be really cool. I'm in the group that wants to play games, but also use it for something serious [palms at work, etc] as well.

  • I think this device has promise (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tim_F ( 12524 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:17PM (#6577205)
    However, $299 US is way too much for a portable device. The GameBoy has remained the king of the handheld market because of price. Both the Lynx and the GameGear (the only comparable devices, the NeoGeo Pocket floundered due to a lack of software) failed to gain market share because of their expensive price (alright, lack of software had a little bit to do with the demise of those systems as well). Still, my point remains. If Sony and this company want to steal Nintendo's handheld thunder, they need to keep their prices low.
    • One of the big prolems with Lynx was the battery life. That thing would go through 6 AA batteries in under two hours.

      Amazon has the Game Gear for $30 [amazon.com]
      • Amazon has the Game Gear for $30.

        And you can get them off eBay for a third of that if you're smart about it ... how is that relevant to the past pricing of the unit?

      • One of the big prolems with Lynx was the battery life. That thing would go through 6 AA batteries in under two hours.

        I think it had more to do with the size of the thing, really. I loved my Lynx, because I spent most of my time playing it with the cigarette lighter adapter hooked up (my parents' minivan had a mid-seat cigarette lighter) or the AC adapter when I was at my grandparents' house. I still don't understand it when my younger cousins show up to family parties with a PlayStation (hello, get a por
    • Both the Lynx and the GameGear ... failed to gain market share because of their expensive price
      Uh, the Lynx and GG failed predominantly because they were big, heavy and had poor battery life. Six AAs that don't last more than a few hours is a big problem. From memory, my Lynx could use up batteries about twice as fast as I could charge them...
    • That's about middle-of-the-road price wise for PalmOS based color devices. This device is not aimed at the GameBoy market. It's aimed at the not-GameBoy market.

  • Midway? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by AntiOrganic ( 650691 )
    Have they ever produced a single game that didn't suck? All I can remember is bad 80's arcade games, and Mortal Kombat.

    Activision is better, producing Wolfenstein/Enemy Territory and the like, but we're going to need some serious muscle here to fight with the likes of Sony and Nintendo.

    IMHO, this is going to be another WonderSwan/Atari Lynx/NeoGeo Pocket Color. Some good ideas, but without developer support you're not going to get any market penetration. Period.
    • Didn't Midway do NBA Jam as well? That was a great game.
    • The Wonderswan is doing just fine in Japan (well, the color one at least)
    • Gauntlet: Dark Legacy is a great game just for the multiplayer fun. It's the only one in my library that I still play right now, and it was one of the games I bought when I first bought my PS2 two years ago. Warning: the game isn't great on your own, but with friends it rocks.

  • Whoo-hoo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by taped2thedesk ( 614051 ) * on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:43PM (#6577310)
    Now I can play Giraffe with a controller!!
  • A powerfull palmOS based calculator that including pim would be great! Especially since HP is leaving this market.

    Games might be a waste for the price being offered. However imagine graphing as well as running mathmatica lite on a 60-80mhz processor! Sweet. It would beat the hell out of the TI's and the no longer updated HP's on the market.

    Or better yet download terminal application to log into your unix box. I have seen ones for HP that can long into debian.

    I still use my old TI-85 from highschool a dec

  • Fugly (Score:3, Funny)

    by acxr is wasted ( 653126 ) * on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:58PM (#6577393)
    Tapwave is bordering on winning the "Most Useless Website Award For A Company Trying To Break-In To An Oligopolistic [reference.com] Market."

    Oooo, who will take home the "Crappie?"
    • no friggen crap. What the hell went wrong there? WEIRD navigation and bizarre drop shadow yuck. How can you be so careless with a site? If you don't know what your doing KEEP IT SIMPLE!!!
      • The strange rollovers, the lack of _any_ pictures of the things or games, the unclickable clickables... the list goes on and on.

        Glad to know I'm not crazy.
  • Wow, talk about a marketing campaign on a budget. The Flash site was laughable and that Real Video with the dorky guy in the red shirt trying to be hip was totally ludicrous. Not a good way to get a product taken seriously, and neither is the $300 price tag.
  • and it's called a palm pilot! I used my Sony Clie to kill tons of valuable class time playing nearly all of the popcap.com games. My gf has a high res color Clie (T615s or something, $90 at Best Buy refurb) and the games look awesome on it. My point? For under $100 you can already have a sweet Palm OS based gaming device that does all that productivity stuff too...

  • Own ability to make games.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by euxneks ( 516538 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:21AM (#6577500)
    I am just curious, with all the cool little hand held devices, which one is most friendly to the gamer who likes to program as well?

    I think it would be a good idea for the companies to make something like the playstation's yaroze back in tha day. Imagine making your own game on the PSP or this new handheld system, or even the gameboy advance! Ah.. but to dream.
    • The GP32 has good tools. It was always intended by the manufacturer to be a platofor that users could program. There is a Gameboy homebrew scene. Any linux based system (Zarus) is going to be pretty easy to develop for, but not optimized for gaming. I would guess that this Helix thing will be relatively easy to code for, and seems to have 3d acceleration, which would be fun. Let's hope that they make dev kits available.
    • Well in my opinion, I'd say the GP32 is good, nice and fast, with a big screen. *But* the GBA really REALLY makes up for the slow processor with all its hardware functionality (tile modes, sprite scaling rotation etc) which makes it really easy to write stuff for the GBA

      I'd like to think the PSP would be good to write for, but with UMD I'm wondering how long it will be before we can actually put anything on there. Hopefully it wont be as complicated as the PS2 to get some real power out of it

      I have no exp

  • not a chance (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 73939133 ( 676561 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:34AM (#6577547)
    PalmOS will undergo massive changes over the next couple of years, at least if Palm is going to stay in business, so developing for this thing is not going to be fun. The rest of the gaming stuff is proprietary and expensive. And on top of that, the device is itself quite expensive.

    In a few months, the T3 will be out with a 320x480 screen and Sony's Clies will have come down to that price. Those cover PDA users who want gaming pretty well. And for gamers who want PDA functionality, the main players are adding more features as it is cost effective.

    And Microsoft is pushing PPC quite aggressively, and while the UI on PPC sucks, that doesn't matter for gaming, and the PPC kernel is probably better suited to gaming than PalmOS.

    Finally, cell phones are pushing hard into the gaming area, and they seem to be doing quite well. They don't give you stunning graphics, but they have entertaining games, often written in cross-platform J2ME: much easier to program and much bigger target market for vendors.

    Traditionally, a company like this might hope to get acquired, but who's going to buy these guys? Maybe Palm will buy back its ex-employees as they did with Handspring, but that's about the best that can happen.

    Overall, I think this device has no chance in hell.
  • I first read about this a couple days ago at work in Infoworld or Infomation Week, or one of those free magazines. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the article there said it would also play MP3s which would make sense. Now it's not going to compare with an iPod for storage anytime soon, but with a couple dozen songs on an SD card it could be fun.

    I already have a Clie but since I've been thinking about getting a GBA SP and a MP3 player, this thing really caught my eye. Anyway, glad the story got posted, I'm 2 for
  • multiuser vaporware [google.com] doesn't 'splain a durn thing about this!
    <pout>

  • Well (Score:4, Insightful)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:08AM (#6577844)
    Let me express my cynicism this way:

    This appears to be one of two things. Either it is an overpriced gameboy with low-end PDA specs, or an Ipaq for people who think themselves too stupid to figure out how to download native games, or currently available NES, SNES, Gensis and MAME emulators onto their own Ipaq. Its only advantage over the current batch of XScale PDAs, it seems, will be developer support, unless you believe that Compaq's and Palm's engineering and battery life advancements at the time of this device's release will be found inferior to this one's, which seems unlikely. Maybe they'll forgo a modern screen to save power, but then why not just get a gameboy? Will developer support for a gaming platform manufacturer not a major name in the industry, who is furthermore in COMPETITION with major names in the industry, be, itself, competitive? I find it hard to answer that with a yes.

    And let's be clear on this: this device is not out NOW. It is not, at least as far as specs go, competing with presently available devices like the 200MHz Ipaq 1910, say, selling for $250 or 400MHz Ipaq 2215 selling for $370. It is not, at least as far as available titles go, in any place to come close to competing with existing platforms like the Gameboy. This device, the existence of which at all is purely speculative, is priced at $299 for a release at best several months to come.

    If you want a handheld computer and want to play games on it, buy an Ipaq 1910, also with SDIO, currently available for under $250 depending on where you shop and play Age of Empires [bargainpda.com], Everquest [sony.com], PocketQuake, PocketDoom, SNES, NES, Genesis, SMS, MAME and the upcoming titles now.

    If you want a handheld gaming system with titles available NOW, go with the Gameboy.

    If you want to wait several months to pay a PDA price for your next Gameboy without any certainty as to whether titles will in FACT be available at all, then this is the system for you. Hmm.
  • Tapwave will continue to unveil a new feature each week for the next few week

    If the point of issuing press releases is to get stories, this is a pretty bad way to handle it. Do they expect mainstream news sources to publish a story like "Tapwave gadget will have one more button than previously thought" or "Smart Media card support unveiled for that thing we covered last week"? No-one would care. They'd be better off doing a big unveiling and getting lots of review samples out there.

    Maybe if they're goi

    • Maybe it's a business model that looks like this:

      1. Create Company
      2. Offer IPO
      3. Announce new product with impossibly cool features every few weeks
      4. Sell stock at inflated Prices
      5. Profit!!!
  • I lack good controls (and Linux) on my Pocket Loox, so trying to play anything with some action i.e snes games is too tricky.. I'm stuck with pocketscumm :)
    some things that would make this baby interesting:
    syncing with linux (it seems to be running palm os, so syncing doesn't seem impossible)
    a port of mplayer or something in the likings
    a nes/snes emulator
    Activision releases Re-Volt, or maybe Rc revenge for the device :)
  • From helix.com:

    Analog controller, integrated triggers and a full complement of action buttons

    This is what makes it better for gaming that the current range of PDA's. Having an Analog controller is a good thing IMHO it's what's missing from every handheld gaming device that I've encountered. The only reservation that I have is the construction quality. If you can snap the stick off, or even if it only feels like you can then it will be totally pointless. Otherwise, I think that the device has a really g

  • ...because it takes 6 weeks for the Flash to load
  • This could be a good move here, Palm OS is one of the easiest development platforms in widespread use. It has also prooven its self in the handy market through the treo line from handspring. lets just hope it doesn't turn out like some of the Bad Implimentations [n-gage.com] of a handy/gaming system.
  • they are releasing a feature a week.

    We've seen this kind of marketing strategy before, but I don't think I can recall one where it has been deliberate. That is. . , "What will the new Computer/Car/Quake do!? The world wants to know!" -And, frankly, so does the company's PR department, because they've been ready to go since March, but nobody will tell them what the hell the product is suppoed to do, so they release what little they can when they can. As such, the whole exercise actually helps to ramp up
    • Ooh, and one which has all the destructive qualities of microwave technology, but this time, in the hands of children with still developing brains.

      Oh, come now. Bluetooth is not powerful enough to have any detrimntal affects on the children. Look at meee, my Plam and cellfoan have Blootueth, and there'sss nottthiiingg wrng wittth miiy brane yeeet....

  • I can't believe I'm not seeing shouts of "wait till I port GNU/Linux to it!"

    I'm also surprised more people are not crazy about this idea, especially considering the competition coming out soon like the n-gage from Nokia. Why am I surprised? Because the PalmOS is a haven for open-source developers where many of them can't abide to develop for a Pocket PC, and the n-gage is obviously a more closed type of system.

    So, wake up! It's a Palm--and it's got a controller built-in. I've been waiting for this (

  • 1.) The Videos were stupid. One had some guy babble on about how the GBA sucks, sporting a stupid orange shirt, and stupid facial hair. The other showed more crap, less screenshots.

    2.) The site was soooo dumb. Saving features so people have to come back for them when they are released? How many times did you click on the other features untill you realized they were not active? Where are the screenshots? Game info?

    3.) $299
  • Yes, yes, sounds like a great little piece of hardware. The question is -- will they give away the SDK?

    The exorbitant licensing fees for the 'privilege' to help hardware manufacturers to sell their products is the reason I, for one, don't write games for the Gameboy and its ilk. (Which is particularly sad, since I used to program in assembly language on a very similar platform years ago and still have the skills.)

    Open the SDK and they will come.

  • It's actually cheap... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by twalk ( 551836 )
    This thing is actually cheap! How can I say that when a GBA is only $70? Compare it to all the other Palm PDAs with a 320x480 screen. It's the cheapest one with PalmOS5 and ARM based.

    Since this can also be used for everything else a Palm is used for, I've heard many people say that they'd get it for PIM/productivity stuff, and screw the games.

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