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Gizmondo

The Gizmondo handheld video game unit. British and United States coins included for scale
Manufacturer	Tiger Telematics
Type	Handheld game console
Generation	Seventh generation era
Release date	19 March 2005
Discontinued	February, 2006
Units sold	Less than 25,000 (as of 30 July 2007)[1]
Media	SD, MMC
CPU	ARM9 S3C2440 processor at 400 MHz
Online services	GPRS

The Gizmondo is a handheld gaming console which was released by Tiger Telematics in March 2005.^[2] It has GPRS and GPS technology. The electronics design was undertaken by Plextek Limited^[3] and the industrial design by Rick Dickinson.

The Gizmondo sold poorly, and by February 2006 the company discontinued the device and was forced into bankruptcy.^[4] In 2008, founder and CEO Carl Freer announced that he had reached an agreement with the liquidators, and planned to re-launch Gizmondo ^[5] as Gizmondo 2.^[6]

Gizmondo was overshadowed by the involvement of one of its executives, Stefan Eriksson, in organized crime.^[7][8]

Release

United Kingdom

Gizmondo was released in the UK on 19 March 2005, initially priced at £229. Units enabled with "Smart Adds" had a reduced RRP of £129. The Gizmondo was available from the Gizmondo flagship store on London's Regent Street, via Gizmondo's online shop, and other highstreet and online retailers (such as Argos, Dixons, Currys, John Lewis among others), although it was never clear how many units were actually introduced into those retail channels.

United States

In the US, the Gizmondo launched on October 22, 2005. Retail price was $400 for a unit without Smart Adds, or $229 for a Smart Adds enabled device. It was available only through Gizmondo’s website or at one of several kiosks located in shopping malls. However, only 8 of the planned 14 games were ever released in the US, along with no CoPilot GPS software, though the software was sold on the British site for a week or two. There was little to no advertising, and some of their advertising was even put in magazines of Nintendo Power (Nintendo's official magazine). Plans to distribute the handheld through other retailers never materialized.

Games

The Gizmondo launched with a line-up of fourteen titles, including a port of EA's FIFA Football 2005 and SSX 3, and SCi's Richard Burns Rally. A further thirty titles were known to have been in development for the system, but all were canceled before their release due to Tiger Telematics' bankruptcy.

Gizmondo Main Menu Screen

Smart Adds

The Smart Adds system was intended as a way for consumers to subsidize part of the cost of the unit. A Smart Adds-enabled Gizmondo cost less (£129/$229), but would display advertisements on the Gizmondo's screen at random intervals when the user entered the Home screen on the device. These advertisements would be downloaded via the device's GPRS data connection^[9], and would be targeted based on data inputted to the device. A maximum of three ads would be shown per day. Some ads would include special offers in the form of vouchers or barcodes, and some would utilize the device's GPS system to direct users to the nearest store carrying the advertised product^[10].

However, the Smart Adds service was never activated, and users who paid the reduced price for a Smart Adds-enabled device did not receive any advertisements through their device.

Technical specifications

An example of a Gizmondo game cover

• Display: 72 mm (2.8 inch) TFT screen
• Resolution: 320 pixels × 240 pixels
• CPU: Samsung ARM9 processor running at 400 MHz
• Graphics: nVidia GeForce 3D 4500 128-bit 3D Graphics accelerator, maximum of 65,536 colors
• RAM: 64 MB
• Sound: Built-in speaker
• Communication: Bluetooth class 2 for multiplayer gaming, GSM tri-band
• Ports: Stereo headset socket, Mini-USB client, SD flash card reader
• Power: Removable battery
• Temperature Range: 32°F to 130°F (0°C to 55°C)
• Multimedia: MPEG 4 video playback, ability to play back MP3, WAV and MIDI files via Windows Media Player 9
• JPEG camera
• Removable SIM card
• GPS tracking application
• GPS mapping application
• GPRS Class 10
• SMS
• MMS receive and send
• WAP 2.0
• Polyphonic ring tones
• Flight mode

Gizmondo widescreen

Tiger Telematics planned to release a widescreen Gizmondo in 2006. It was intended to have a larger screen and upgrades like Wi-Fi and TV-out support. The widescreen Gizmondo was announced just a few weeks before the US launch of the Gizmondo, possibly prompting some potential customers to not buy the Gizmondo, and instead wait for the improved model, in an example of the Osborne effect.^[11]

Gizmondo 2

Former Gizmondo director Carl Freer announced in early 2008 his intention to relaunch the Gizmondo console; The Gizmondo 2.

The original planned launch date was May 2008^[12], but this was quickly pushed back to November 2008^[13], along with details of a new company, Media Power, behind the launch, headed by Carl Freer and his Swedish partner Mikael Ljungman with development apparently proceeding according to the new schedule until at least September,^[14] and by December 2008, the console had still not appeared, and another announcement was made about a complete redesign as a Windows CE or Google Android powered smart phone.^[15].

Since then, the Media Power website has gone offline, co-founder Mikael Ljungman has been arrested and accused of serious fraud^[16], and nothing more has been announced about the console or smart phone.

References

External links

• Gizmondo at the Open Directory Project
• Gizmondo Home World
• Gizmondo Forums

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This system category is a stub. Help us expand it with system details as well as a {{system}} infobox. Reliable information can be researched on Wikipedia or you can just search for "Gizmondo" on Google. Do this and you get a cookie.

The Gizmondo is a failed handheld game system by Tiger Telematics.

From Wikia Gaming, your source for walkthroughs, games, guides, and more!

The Gizmondo handheld video game unit. United States and British coins included for scale.

The Gizmondo was a handheld gaming console with GPRS and GPS technology, which was manufactured by Tiger Telematics. Launched in 2005, the Gizmondo sold poorly, and by February of 2006 the company discontinued the Gizmondo and was forced into bankruptcy. Gizmondo was overshadowed by Stefan Eriksson's involvement in organized crime.

The Gizmondo includes a GPS module for in-car navigation which could also be used to track player movement in real-time for multiplayer games. It also contains a 0.3 Megapixel VGA camera mounted on the rear of the device. The Gizmondo can play MP3/WAV/MIDI music, WMV/MPEG4 videos and a variety of 2D/3D games. It can send email and even SMS/MMS messages, although it lacks the ability to send or receive voice calls.

The phone service to enable users to send messages was provided by pre-pay Vodafone accounts bundled with the device. It can also access the Global Positioning System for use as a navigation aid. There were plans to support a variety of location-based services, for example. GPRS and Bluetooth wireless connections were intended to provide multiplayer gaming.

The Gizmondo also had a feature called "Smart Ads." In exchange for a discount on the Gizmondo (of $170 in the US, £100 in the UK), up to three advertisements per day would be displayed on the handheld’s screen. Although the ads would not interrupt game play or other functions of the unit, the user would be forced to watch them before going on to the next function or shutting down the device. However because of the closure of the company, "Smart Ads" currently do not run on the 'Smart Ads' enabled devices.

Gizmondo is powered by a 400 MHz ARM9 processor and has a 2.8 inch 320x240 pixels TFT screen and an NVIDIA 128 bit GoForce 3D 4500 GPU featuring fixed-pipeline shading, hardware transform engine and 1280KB of embedded memory (only 830KB are left when memory is allocated for the double buffers and the z-buffer).

GE (Gametrac Europe), before changing its name to Gizmondo, said it will offer mobile data communications, such as texting, multimedia messaging, WAP, email, and over-the-air game, music and ringtone downloads, but not voice.

The device would feature a tri-band radio. It supports GSM Class 4 and GPRS Class 12 connections. The GPU was added relatively late in the system's design, causing some delays for launch titles and the system, as they were redesigned.

The system's appearance and ergonomics were created by industrial designer Rick Dickinson, who worked in a similar role on various Sinclair products such as the ZX Spectrum.

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