|
|
| www.1001TopWords.com |
|
|
Best of British: Gizmondo Doomed To Fail?
The Gizmondo combined media player, phone and gaming gadget went on sale in the last month for £229. The device sports an impressive spec: - It can be used to play games, music tracks and movies, it can take and store digital photos and can send SMS, MMS and emails, GPS, GPRS and Bluetooth for multi-player gaming. From April 22nd you'll be able to buy a Gizmondo for £100 less - a cool 44% saving. In return, for this discount, Gizmondo users will have to watch three "Smart Adds" per day. The Smart Adds will mainly consist of video clips and small games that come with redemption codes or barcodes that are wirelessly delivered to your Gizmondo over its GPRS connection. I'm not so sure that this option is cheaper....Ok, 44% less but who pays the data cost for downloading the ad? Even if each ad is only 100Kb (I'm guessing they'll be more but I'm being generous) then on my network (Vodafone) at £2.35/Mb these ads would cost me £257!!! Other reasons why I think the Gizmondo is destined for failure are: - It costs £229. Nintendo's DS handheld costs £99, and a PSP is expected to cost £129 - far less than the cost of a Gizmondo - The DS already has a pool of fans of earlier Nintendo handhelds to draw on (87,000 DS handhelds were sold in the first two days in Europe) and the PSP is also likely to have a strong following - Most importantly, it doesn't have a killer game for launch I'd love to be able to 'Buy British' but I think the Gizmondo will go the way of the C5, Sedgeway etc. May be worth buying one as I bet it will be worth a bit in 10 years! Maybe in a year I'll be proven wrong. The author runs a blog following developments in the internet and mobile internet sectors. With over 10 years experience in strategy consulting and business development, and has seen and lived through the highs, and the lows of the industry. Based in London, the author can be contacted on admin@connectedinternet.co.uk and his blog can be found at http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Ten Things You Should Know in Video Games BloodRayne | It's Zero Hour | Midasplayer |The latest in online gaming | Computer Games Virtual Wrapping Paper and E-Gifts- Is There Really An Online Santa? The internet has proven to be an amazing delivery conduit for words, information, music, pictures and generally anything that can be turned into little 1s and 0s. As we approach the end of the year the question is asked "Can the Internet deliver my Christmas presents?" Now thanks to a remarkable innovation at www.ustargames.com the answer is yes, there really is an online Santa. Why We Play Games, Part 1 There exists some ephemeral quality that separates gamers from the rest of humanity, some thing that makes us, us and them, not us. I've never been able to quite put my finger on it, but it is inescapably there. Today, in hopes of moving closer to that essential quality of gamerosity, we examine part of what makes us tick. In particular, we take a look at what draws different types of gamers to the hobby. Every gamer plays for different reasons, but there are common threads that tie the experience together. Sony PSP The period of the greatest portable console has finally arrived. Brace yourself for astonishing, gaming quality on a gaming device which is poised to change the way you think about portable devices. Cloud Laser Art A new art form in the future will be CLA. Cloud Laser Art. People can go to a place where there are laser units, sit out side in a small shielded area and draw on the clouds. It would be fun and a great form of self expression, which would make humans very happy. We know that mankind likes to use the natural environment for self expression from cave drawings to rock piles near road ways and graffiti on rock formations. The idea of drawing on clouds is much better, because the cloud eventually dissolves and like an etch-a-sketch is ready to start over. This will be similar to what happens after Ice Carvings, Ice Sculpting is alive and well in North America. We have all heard of Sand Castle building and contests, which go on around the world. Next Generation Games Consoles - Separating Fact from Fiction Over the next 18 months the 3 giants of the Games Console world will be battling it out in stores and homes across Europe, America and Asia for the title of the world greatest Games Console. The stakes are high in this multi billion dollar business, not just for the console sales but for the games sales that go along side it. Since the launch announcements of all 3 consoles in May at the E3 conference in LA. The 3 combatants have been vying for the millions of column inches that have been written about the Next Generation Consoles. Each Press release has been hotly followed by another press release from a rival company so much so that extracting the facts from all the hype has been nearly impossible. At the launch press conferences Microsoft boasted that the Xbox 360 could do 9-billion-dot-product-operations per second. Sony then came out and said that the PS3 could do 51-billion-dot-product-operations per second however Sony had combined the CPU and GPU performance numbers whilst Microsoft only reported its CPU performance number. When the consumer is up against this sort of publicity blizzard it is best not to believe a thing until you can check the facts for yourself.So what do we know?Well for the Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3 we have lots of lists of hardware and specifications which actually don't mean very much in isolation. The main thing that need concern us are the processor speeds and they are both stated as being 3.2 GHz The only time that the hardware will mean anything is when we get to run them side by side and then if experience is anything to go by the difference in real life performance won't be noticeable and will just be used by the press departments to battle it out.Despite all the press releases and information that has been spewing out of the headquarters of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo we actually know very few facts.We know that in all likelihood the Xbox 360 will be on the shelves in time for Christmas, Amazon are currently taking pre-delivery orders and are quoting a release date of November 28th. The prices have been set at $299 for the Core System and $399 for the Xbox 360, the difference being that the Core system doesn't have the external hard drive required to save games and download new content or the headset required to play online on Xbox Live! Why 2 prices? and why a version that hasn't got everything included? This looks very much like a product of the marketing department trying to get a product at the historically important sub $300 level more than anything and this may backfire on them in the long run. Next to hit the Shelves will be Sony's Playstation 3 supposedly in spring next year once again we have very few facts to go on, Sony are continually releasing press releases and mentioning in public that the price will be high and the figure of $500 has been mentioned but many industry experts suspect that this is a ploy so that when they release it at $300 or $350 it will look like a bargain. The final console to hit the shelves will be the Nintendo Revolution some time late in 2006 and 2007. Since the "launch" at E3 this year very little has been said about it by Nintendo. It seems at this time the "Launch" was just a way to deflect some of the publicity away from Microsoft and Sony.One fact is certain, If Microsoft do get the Xbox 360 onto the shelves before Christmas it will be this year's biggest selling Christmas gift. So until you get your hands on one of the consoles?.Question everything! A Parents Guide to Online Gaming, Part 1 The internet touches every aspect of your children's lives. Where you might look up an unknown word in a dictionary, your kids are more likely to use dictionary.com. Where you use the telephone, they use instant messenger. An even greater difference can be found in how they play games. Where the games of their parent's generation may have involved a board, cards, or at their most sophisticated a console system, the games your children play on the net can be far more complex. They mine gold, spread empires, fight dragons and aliens alone or with tens, hundreds, even thousands of their fellow gamers. All of this makes for a confusing mish mash of names, places, jargon and lingo that can leave you with no idea what your kids are actually doing and a vague feeling of uneasiness that some part of it might not be good for them. PC Gaming Video: Meeting the Demands If you have an interest in playing PC games that were made at least in the past couple of years, you've probably seen the serious video demands these games now have. It's not only that you need a fast system that can handle all of the information in today's games, but you need a major performance video card to handle computer game video too. Guns Dont Kill People - Videogames Do! "Ban these evil games", "Videogame violence corrupting our nation's youth", "video games stole my husband". It seems everyday that the media are making more and more claims about the evils of videogames. But are these claims based on fact, or is it merely that there is a juicy new scapegoat out there that the woes of the world can be pinned on? Playing Games Like Its 80s Do you miss the good old 80's Amiga and Commodore games? You are not the only one. In fact, creating remakes for popular eighties games is all the rage. UAV Swarm Reconfiguration for computer war games The modern battlespace is changing in the real world and in the very near future swarms of UAVs with be a tactic and weapon of choice. Is your computer game software ahead or behind the curve of inovation. How will these UAV swarms be launched, what speeds with they travel? How will they render the enemy useless? How will you defend against them? This is one thing that is keeping Pentagon war planners up late at night. This is one major issue which will determine the outcome of battles in the future. Ingredients For A Great Game There are millions of computer games out there on the market, how do you make your game best selling? What features have to be included? I have taken a look on previously best sellers trying to determine what makes a great game. A Comparison Of the Next Generation Gaming Consoles (Part 2) Arguably Microsoft can attribute a great deal of its success to the hugely successful online capabilities. The new Xbox 360 will continue with the online feature and develop it even further. Xbox 360 will offer two tiers of online function, silver and gold. With silver being a basic package for users to connect and play online, and gold offering other services such as additional downloads and content. Games To Encourage Thinking Skills There is no doubt about it, using computer games is a great way to encourage children to expand their realm of thinking. Your options for entertaining your child may seem numbered. Many people allow their children to spend quite a bit of time in front of the television. But, what good does that do? If you want them to learn something while they are zoned out, you are completely lost. But, if you flip on the computer, download a great game, you may actually be able to encourage them to learn more and you will encourage good thinking skills as well. Counter Strike, The Beginner of Broad Band PC Gaming This is the world of 21st century, the century of technologies. Every thing is fast now a days and as far as the Computers and games are concerned, they are at the top of all. Every one these days like playing games and some of them love it. Well few years ago PC gaming was not so advance and usually was single user based and if any one wanted to play with any other player then one must have an extra input or any compatible playing device . Classic Fragfest: Quake III Arena As graphics technology improves in leaps and bounds for the next pc generation, more and more gamers expect, and more or less demand, new and innovating concepts to blow their mind. However, there are some games out there that simply stand the test of time for pure entertainment. Another Title by Atari Released on StarForce Protected DVDs "Atari has selected StarForce to protect their brand-new game called Race Driver 2", a supervisor from StarForce has stated today. Evolution of Gaming : Graphics vs Gameplay If you are old enough to remember the early days of computer gaming you know there were a lot of great games that were fun because of the exceptional gameplay and not just the graphics. Gaming started to become a little more popular in the 90s once people started buying computers. In the early 90s games like Maniac Mansion, X-com 1, and Civilization were extremely hot because of their addictive unique gameplay. Today gaming is mainstream and marketed towards a mass audience. In order to market to everyone, many games these days focus on the graphics and special effects rather than unique gameplay. You see many games that seem to be carbon copies of each other with slightly different twists. Drawing Hand Held Surface to Air Missile Fire at Night Using UAVs One of the easiest ways to draw shoulder launched missiles at night is to fly UAVs very close and use the simulated sound of an Apache Attach Helicopter, Howling of a jet fighter or a few UAVs flying together the combined sound of a four engine transport. At night you could have a few UAVs with strobe lights or a tint of green glow simulating reflections off the canopy of an attack helicopter along with sound used by a whistler on the UAV, or even a whistler, which mimicked a high frequency sound which caused their equipment to whistler. SMS Gaming - Text Paging Games that can be Played by Anyone Using the Physical World as a Game Board: This is not a Kinky game! SMS stands for Short Message Service.
|
| © Athifea Distribution LLC - 2013 |