Open Source Gaming Handheld Project Wants Your Money 203
YokimaSun writes to point out a Kickstarter project that may warm the cockles of your heart: "Fans of emulation and homebrew have not had much to cheer about over the years; the recent generation of consoles has pretty much killed off any hacking by constant firmware updates. The days of PSP homebrew have died a death and consoles like the Caanoo, GP2x and even the mighty Openpandora never really lived up to the massive expectation. There is a glimmer of hope from a team of homebrew developers who have developed a new console called the GCW-Zero, a new open source handheld system which uses the OpenDingux Linux OS. The specs are impressive, with a Ingenic JZ4770 1 GHz MIPS processor, Vivante GC860, capable of OpenGL ES 2.0, 3.5 inch LCD with 320x240 pixels; 4:3 aspect ratio, 512 MB DDR2 and 16GB of internal memory which can via external memory card be extended by another 32GB. N64 and PS1 emulation and everything below should be at full speed in time."
Not impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
The specs are impressive, with a Ingenic JZ4770 1 GHz MIPS processor, Vivante GC860, capable of OpenGL ES 2.0, 3.5 inch LCD with 320x240 pixels; 4:3 aspect ratio, 512 MB DDR2 and 16GB of internal memory which can via external memory card be extended by another 32GB. N64 and PS1 emulation and everything below should be at full speed in time."
No, that is not impressive. Super lo-res screen, slower than any phone that is available today. But it's open source, so I suppose that's good.
But what is the point? Learning? Because the thing won't sell, like the previous models didn't do. You can have the best hardware, but if you don't have games for the device it doesn't matter.
I, for one, would rather game on my phone which is faster and has a much higher resolution display, with a bluetooth connected game controller of my choice.
OpenPandora never lived up to the expectations? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, it was hugely delayed, but I own one and I do think it certainly meets my expectations. Sure, it's not cheap, but it has much better specs than the GCW-Zero: 800x480 screen, two full SD slots, full keyboard, massive battery life. It has great emulators for all those consoles mentioned (the PS1 emulation is actually better than the original, it does double resolution rendering without glitches), and more emulators are developped as we speak: NDS and PSP for instance. Also the Pandora community is very much alive and kicking.
So I would say OpenPandora never lived up to the expectations, it just took a few more years than originally planned to get production going as well as it is now.
Re:wtf (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a MIPS instead of ARM so itll emulate PSP at decent speed.
Don't forget that the PSP has two MIPS CPUs, each with its own floating point processor.
And a 480x272 resolution, which it will be kind of hard to emulate on a 320x240 display.
The list of failed handheld gaming consoles is long. The list of successful open source one is empty. There's no way you're going to build a momentum, unless you are way ahead of the market leaders. And without a momentum, it'll die before it takes off.
Donate money to this, and you'll either get nothing, or another box that goes in the closet/basement/attic. Perhaps you'll get your money back after 20 years if you keep it in mint condition.
Re:wtf (Score:5, Insightful)