Gizmondo fans--both of you--get ready to celebrate. Your poorly received, currently defunct handheld console may be seeing a spectacular rebirth later this year, despite public indifference and countless tangential criminal lawsuits.
For those of you who've never heard of it or have made a concerted effort to block the old memory banks, the original Gizmondo was launched in 2005 by Tiger Telematics. The device boasted built-in GPS (around which many of the games were designed), a 0.3-megapixel VGA camera, and the ability to send and receive e-mails and texts.
By the beginning of 2006, Tiger pulled the plug on the device due to a general malaise on the part of the public and press. Perhaps everyone was too busy following the Ferrari-crashing Mafioso shenanigans of Stefan Eriksson, one of Gizmondo's founders.
Eriksson's business partner (on the more law-abiding side of things), the fittingly named Carl Freer, recently told Swedish journalist Hans Sandberg, "I'm going to resurrect Gizmondo," a statement that coincided with the relaunch of the handheld's site. (Incidentally, the site appears right after tech blog Gizmodo when you Google its name). Right now the site features simply an overzealous Flash teaser intro.
According to Freer (pictured above), the Gizmodo 2.0 is set for a May release this year, with a larger-screen version hitting next Christmas. (I'm assuming that most people reading this won't be able to hold off for the latter and will end up buying both.) The console will feature 35 titles at launch, with six more dropping soon after.
The price, which is almost making me rethink my overt cynicism (almost), will be $99 at launch--or possibly even free, should Tiger be able to work out a deal with a wireless provider.
OK, I admit, it sounds slightly more promising than I initially assumed. But let's not go, you know, crashing any Ferraris any time soon.
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January 28, 2008 11:46 AM
You have a broken link in this post:
recently told Swedish journalist
Here is the correct link:
http://sandberghans.blogspot.com/2008/01/carl-freer-starts-over-with-gizmondo.html
Best regards,
Hans Sandberg
January 28, 2008 4:06 PM
Thanks, Hans; it's fixed in the post.