Welcome to the Panasonic Jungle, a portable handheld

[eastmen]

http://www.gaming-age.com/news/2010/10/4-6



According to the company, the Jungle is "a new mobile device concept designed specifically for online gamers". We do know that it features a high resolution display, a flip-open clamshell design like the Nintendo DS, along with a D-pad, various face and shoulder buttons, a mini-keyboard and touchpad. More specific details will be released in the future.


unless this has the power to play wow and actually gets blizzard to port it to it , then its doa

More info at engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/04/panasonics-jungle-portable-gaming-system-emerges-gets-shown-of/

If its x86 based it could be really good. I wouldn't mind getting one to play SW TOR on the go. Some might want it for wow as I said above if its possible.

[Rolf N]

I like that it's both handheld and portable ;)

Other than that, I can't see this going anywhere. With no launch lineup and no software partners announced, this seems more like a statement of intent. That BGS MMO that was announced ... in conjunction with this, let's say, isn't even on the platform. Nothing is.

Any control scheme they can come up with will be limiting by MMO standards. Any simpler genre they tackle will be up against an already well explored market with strong players on all sides.

I want to know their arguments why developers should target this device now instead of the PSPs, (3)DSes and Smartphones of the world, all of which already have networking capabilities.

[MfA]

If it's on a surface and the keyboard is usable enough that I can use my left hand to map a dozen quick keys it could work ... but yeah, console controls won't ever create gameplay MMO gamers are used to ... not enough buttons.

[DeadlyNinja]

Can it play Vindictus?

[brain_stew]

Looks like a commercial take on the Pandora just with a much worse design. The Pandora has seen success because it has only ever needed to target the smallest of niche markets, a device like this needs to hit critical mass or it won't receive the developer support it needs.

Hopefully the whole bottom half of the bulky shell is filled with a huge Lion battery because if it can't pull 5/6 hours battery life in games then its DOA. Design is way too bulky to interest me personally.

[Exophase]

I'd like to comment, but all we got are some poorly lit renders and a shot of it sitting on someone's desk with most of the interface obscured. I feel like they're trying to hide its actual design from me.

[Npl]

me, I want a mobile portable handheld console.. preferably powered by accus or batteries!
Why cant they figure out the most important details.

[darkblu]

Rumors of Tegra. Again.

http://www.fudzilla.com/mobiles/item/20402-panasonic-jungle-gaming-console-has-tegra

[DeadlyNinja]

Looks like a commercial take on the Pandora just with a much worse design. The Pandora has seen success because it has only ever needed to target the smallest of niche markets, a device like this needs to hit critical mass or it won't receive the developer support it needs.

Wait, the Pandora is a success? The reason I ask is because I'm also interested in getting one, but I'm hesitating because the price might kill it quickly and limit the homebrew scene on it.

I wonder if this thing is powerful enough to run homebrew. Either way, it looks ugly and unwieldy compared to Pandora.

[Exophase]

Define "success." It's successful in the sense that demand is far outstripping supply. It's not successful in the sense that it hasn't broke even yet.

I doubt the price is ever going to be the limiting factor for it. Good luck actually getting one.

Rumors of Tegra. Again.

http://www.fudzilla.com/mobiles/item/20402-panasonic-jungle-gaming-console-has-tegra

Hey cool, a "parable console." I hope it teaches us a valuable lesson.

Good for Tegra, it's now toured the rumor mill of every upcoming gaming handheld, including this thing.

[eastmen]

If it's on a surface and the keyboard is usable enough that I can use my left hand to map a dozen quick keys it could work ... but yeah, console controls won't ever create gameplay MMO gamers are used to ... not enough buttons.

It seems to have a keyboard.

Anyway for light mmorpging it could be fine. For raiding i'd never want it

[ToTTenTranz]

I don't know how this could possibly succeed at playing MMORPGs without windows+x86..

.. and it's already been stated that it runs linux.

Unless Panasonic is shooting money at successful developers with a minigun, I'd find it hard to see those developers fragmenting the mobile games market even more.

[eastmen]

I don't know how this could possibly succeed at playing MMORPGs without windows+x86..

.. and it's already been stated that it runs linux.

Unless Panasonic is shooting money at successful developers with a minigun, I'd find it hard to see those developers fragmenting the mobile games market even more.

I wasn't aware that accurate spec sheets were released for this

[Exophase]

At least some Windows MMOs are viable on Linux via WINE. Afaik WoW is one of them. I don't think there's that severe of a performance hit either.

Of course it needs to be x86 too, ie not Tegra. Personally I think it'd be nice to actually see Tegra 2 (or better?) confirmed for an actual handheld and not a netbook or tablet.

[Laurent06]

At least some Windows MMOs are viable on Linux via WINE. Afaik WoW is one of them. I don't think there's that severe of a performance hit either.
That's alas not true: I have to reboot to Windows for WoW raids. Under Linux, during heavy action, my FPS varies too much going from 80 FPS down to below 10 FPS, while under Windows it's varying less often and between 40 and 80 FPS. OTOH disk loading is sensibly faster under Linux, but for raids it's of no use.

(FWIW, my CPU is an i7 920, 6 GB RAM and an nVidia GTX 275, so definitely a good machine for WoW, and a video card with very good OpenGL support under Linux.)

Anyway as eastmen said, high-level playing on such a device wouldn't be possible. My raid interface would occupy all of the screen by itself :lol:

[Exophase]

Someone should profile that >_>

[eastmen]

That's alas not true: I have to reboot to Windows for WoW raids. Under Linux, during heavy action, my FPS varies too much going from 80 FPS down to below 10 FPS, while under Windows it's varying less often and between 40 and 80 FPS. OTOH disk loading is sensibly faster under Linux, but for raids it's of no use.

(FWIW, my CPU is an i7 920, 6 GB RAM and an nVidia GTX 275, so definitely a good machine for WoW, and a video card with very good OpenGL support under Linux.)

Anyway as eastmen said, high-level playing on such a device wouldn't be possible. My raid interface would occupy all of the screen by itself :lol:

yup but for grinding it be good.

I don't think anyone wants to raid while on a bus or a car trip. But doing basic quests and farming for gold or grinding would be fine on such a device. People play wow on netbooks with 6 inch screens

[NeoTechni]

The rumored price is what, $400? That's more than a netbook, and they can run WoW.
I dont see how they can expect to compete with such a limited lineup of games.
They cant seriously expect to rely completely on MMOs, a genre requiring monthly fees, on such expensive hardware. They'll almost certainly have to open the platform up to indie development.
And then it's no better than a Pandora.

[Exophase]

We don't know anything tangible about its price, specs, even the controls are a little ambiguous. No point forming much in the way of conclusive opinions about it until we do.

[NeoTechni]

Well we know it probably wont have WoW

[I.S.T.]

That's alas not true: I have to reboot to Windows for WoW raids. Under Linux, during heavy action, my FPS varies too much going from 80 FPS down to below 10 FPS, while under Windows it's varying less often and between 40 and 80 FPS. OTOH disk loading is sensibly faster under Linux, but for raids it's of no use.

(FWIW, my CPU is an i7 920, 6 GB RAM and an nVidia GTX 275, so definitely a good machine for WoW, and a video card with very good OpenGL support under Linux.)

Anyway as eastmen said, high-level playing on such a device wouldn't be possible. My raid interface would occupy all of the screen by itself :lol:

WINE is a translator... Does it have a high performance hit?

I've never used it, you see.

[rpg.314]

It isn't. It is a native implementation of all the windows APIs. The apps link to it at runtime and run at at native speeds.

[I.S.T.]

It isn't. It is a native implementation of all the windows APIs. The apps link to it at runtime and run at at native speeds.

Ah, OK. Thanks for the info.

[Laurent06]

It isn't. It is a native implementation of all the windows APIs. The apps link to it at runtime and run at at native speeds.
That's correct... unless people think that "at native speeds" means "at Windows speed" :wink:

[Exophase]

Yeah, and there's potential for overhead when servicing these calls, particularly when it involves converting from one abstraction to a substantially different one. Chances are the real killer is in going from Direct3D to OpenGL. I don't know the first thing about Direct3D, maybe someone else can give an insight into this, but if somehow every vertex has to be transformed it's going to be painful, or if substantially more draw calls have to be inserted, or if something is being done that's relatively light on D3D and not on OGL.

Glide wrappers have a lot of overhead too.

[Laurent06]

Yeah, and there's potential for overhead when servicing these calls, particularly when it involves converting from one abstraction to a substantially different one.
Indeed. For instance, all semaphores go through the wineserver which is a different process.

[rapso]

aren't all blizzard games running on macosx as well? from there to linux is just a business decision IMO.
If it got an AtomZ with GMA500, it could be quite a nice device to develop for (as long as img contributes the drivers).

[ToTTenTranz]

aren't all blizzard games running on macosx as well? from there to linux is just a business decision IMO.
If it got an AtomZ with GMA500, it could be quite a nice device to develop for (as long as img contributes the drivers).


I doubt they'd pick up the older Atom Z500.

If it's using any x86 at all (which I highly doubt), it's a Moorestown.

Ideally, it would be a Zacate or Ontario.. but that's another story.

[Exophase]

Ontario probably consumes too much power on a device of this form factor. At most it'll have a ~4.5Ah @ 3.7V battery. Ontario consumes 9W full tilt, add at least another W for the display, RAM, and whatever other peripherals and you're looking at well under 2 hours at full tilt. Chances are that it'll have a much smaller battery, more likely something on the order of < 2Ah like most other handhelds.

[NeoTechni]

Ontario probably consumes too much power on a device of this form factor. At most it'll have a ~4.5Ah @ 3.7V battery. Ontario consumes 9W full tilt, add at least another W for the display, RAM, and whatever other peripherals and you're looking at well under 2 hours at full tilt.

I'm tempted to make a joke about how the entire province of Ontario uses a lot more power than that.

But I doubt I could make it funny.

[Exophase]

I appreciate the sentiment anyway ;D

[rapso]

I'm tempted to make a joke about how the entire province of Ontario uses a lot more power than that.
But can they run crysis...? :P

There is a patch question bout how successful the Jungle will be
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/episode-136-pach-attack/706153

he pretty much says what I think, against the current competition it will die early.

My opinion is also, that it needs some niche with no competition to survive, and x86 + just for MMO games could have a chance.

[NeoTechni]

Unless it has a 3G connection, how would a portable work only catering to MMOs?

It pretty much NEEDS homebrew


And I'm sure at least 1 PC in Ontario can run Crysis. Right?

[Exophase]

My opinion is also, that it needs some niche with no competition to survive, and x86 + just for MMO games could have a chance.

I would like to say that artificially limiting what the device is capable of without somehow catering advantageously to that niche isn't going to make a platform successful.

But I guess we both know better how the market really works.

[rapso]

I would like to say that artificially limiting what the device is capable of without somehow catering advantageously to that niche isn't going to make a platform successful.I don't really see a "limiting".

compared to other gaming-only devices (yeah, they can play UMD and go online, but are mainly made for games), it would need to be always online, even with some slow 2G/GPRS (which would make it cheap for AT&T etc. from the traffic/network usage point of view), it would be enough to maintain some RPG gameplay, I don't have that with NDS nor PSP, although both offer wifi and the NDS even free online gameplay if you're in range of some hotspots.
compared to mobile phones (and iPod) it would would have some input (analog stick+keyboard ?) that are made for gaming and hopefully it would be way cheaper (I've paid 170euro for my netbook -> atom+8GBflash+9inch, so I guess 150euro for for a smaller mass market device is a reasonable price)

To sum up, I think it would be successful if:
- easy to program/homebrew (linux+x86+stable ogl)
- always&cheap online (even if kind of slow)
- gaming input
- cheap

for <=150 and those features I'd buy a jungle, even if just for the sake of homebrew fun.

[Laurent06]

To sum up, I think it would be successful if:
- easy to program/homebrew (linux+x86+stable ogl)
I can't see the relation between easy to program and x86.

[Rys]

I think he probably means not having to cross-compile and work with non-x86 toolchains on a dev system, which is a typical problem for casual homebrew.

[I.S.T.]

I don't really see a "limiting".

compared to other gaming-only devices (yeah, they can play UMD and go online, but are mainly made for games), it would need to be always online, even with some slow 2G/GPRS (which would make it cheap for AT&T etc. from the traffic/network usage point of view), it would be enough to maintain some RPG gameplay, I don't have that with NDS nor PSP, although both offer wifi and the NDS even free online gameplay if you're in range of some hotspots.
compared to mobile phones (and iPod) it would would have some input (analog stick+keyboard ?) that are made for gaming and hopefully it would be way cheaper (I've paid 170euro for my netbook -> atom+8GBflash+9inch, so I guess 150euro for for a smaller mass market device is a reasonable price)

To sum up, I think it would be successful if:
- easy to program/homebrew (linux+x86+stable ogl)
- always&cheap online (even if kind of slow)
- gaming input
- cheap

for <=150 and those features I'd buy a jungle, even if just for the sake of homebrew fun.

And how many non-browser based MMOs are available for Linux?

[NeoTechni]

I can't see the relation between easy to program and x86.

Heh. I do.

even with some slow 2G/GPRS (which would make it cheap for AT&T etc. from the traffic/network usage point of view), it would be enough to maintain some RPG gameplay,

And the lag? Instability? Monthly fees on top of the fees for the MMOs? Problems upon problems. A portable doesnt lend itself well to MMOs. People complained PSPs games were too big.

[Laurent06]

I think he probably means not having to cross-compile and work with non-x86 toolchains on a dev system, which is a typical problem for casual homebrew.
Hmm definitely a good reason, which I overlooked, I'm so used to cross-compiling :)

OTOH I guess developing on the device itself would be a pain for real projects; hence the OP would need an environment on his bigger PC that would be close enough to the targeted device and we all know this can be a problem. Just as an example, having OpenGL ES 2 on a desktop PC that behaves exactly as the real thing is not yet here; IIRC the OGL ES 2 simulation environment of Imagination has issues like that. Anyway no matter what you do, not developing on the targeted device itself will always create problems.

[rapso]

I can't see the relation between easy to program and x86.
I just think that the code base is qutie big and people are used to it. sure, it's not a big deal to switch from x86 to arm/mips, from win to linux, from c++ to java/c#, but still, it's always a barrier if you're used to your environment and it's more of a success to offer something most ppl are used to, than to convince them to convert to something new, just this one particular platform.



And how many non-browser based MMOs are available for Linux?
probably more than for psp2, ps4 and xbox720.


And the lag?
a lot of mmo games can run quite fine with 500ms lag, once you have enough going on to notice the network lag, you rather notice a bad framerate drop. (Oh, that comment isn't from me, I don't play mmorpgs, but a friend plays since UO... AC, DaoC and now WoW and he told me that. he said his 14.4 modem was alrite for UO and in DaoC he had lot of times 400ms+ lags with big parties, but as long as his framerate is fine and everyone of the party knows what to do, it was fine... HE said).
I get sick in my online FPS with >50ms latency ;)
But I could imagine, some racing game, some space game (with draggy ships), mmorpgs and action-RPGs might workout quite well.


Instability?

I do not notice that, I watch youtube, play music from my home server etc. and have barely any issues.

Monthly fees on top of the fees for the MMOs?
cheap flats start from 5euro/month (at least here in germany) for GPRS (not sure how it's in your country), I don't think that's of an issue when playing those free2play MMOs nowadays.


Problems upon problems. A portable doesnt lend itself well to MMOs. People complained PSPs games were too big.
I can't imagine how people should play MMOs without keyboards, at least for communication that's crucial

I think the situation is compareable to when Asus showed the eeepc, most ppl said that's cheap crap, celeron 733 or something? how bad must it be if it's aimed to cost $199? 2GB flash memory, that's less than most PCs have RAM. why should you buy it if you can buy a notebook for barely more than 300?... but that tiny niche opened a big new market.
I don't say it has to be that way with Jungle, but I don't see any other opportunity for a new device, fighting on iPhone or NDS territory would be kinda just burning money.
But on the other side, managements make decision like this daily :roll:

[Laurent06]

I just think that the code base is qutie big and people are used to it. sure, it's not a big deal to switch from x86 to arm/mips, from win to linux, from c++ to java/c#, but still, it's always a barrier if you're used to your environment and it's more of a success to offer something most ppl are used to, than to convince them to convert to something new, just this one particular platform.
The only issue you'd have with ARM/Linux against x86/Linux is assembly usage. Oh there might be some other little problems, but certainly nothing like moving from win to linux or from a language to another. And as I told in my previous messsage, as long as you don't develop directly on your target, you *will* have issues even if the CPUs are the same.

[NeoTechni]

I do not notice that, I watch youtube, play music from my home server etc. and have barely any issues.

your home servers connection runs off a cell phone? and is moved around cause its portable?

i dont see how a home server is relavent to the instability of a cvell phone connection

[I.S.T.]

probably more than for psp2, ps4 and xbox720.

Biiiiig problem with your statement. This device is solely made for MMOs. The other three you list have other genres of games to support them that can catalyze/pay for development of MMOs.

This handheld is made for a niche that's just too small.

[rapso]

your home servers connection runs off a cell phone? and is moved around cause its portable?

i dont see how a home server is relavent to the instability of a cvell phone connection
my cell phone that streams from my server is moved around.

Biiiiig problem with your statement. This device is solely made for MMOs. The other three you list have other genres of games to support them that can catalyze/pay for development of MMOs.

This handheld is made for a niche that's just too small.
The point is, that it's always a chicken-and-egg problem. no market for games, so no games for that market. I was actually trying eve online on linux ages ago I think (I'm not sure if I ran it one wine or something). but now you could say
"how many of those linux mmorpgs could run on a tiny device with as few power as a cell phone" and yet again I could dig out one and we could continue that forever.
again, the point is, the niche market has yet to be created, like the netbook market, tablet mass market etc. it exists from the consumer point of view (my opinion), as I think a lot of ppl would like to play their mmorpgs on the go, but there is no way to do that atm. I don't think WoW will be a launch title, but porting it to this device is not that difficult. (I rather see that happen than blizzard releasing a console game for the other ones).

[codedivine]

Just as an example, having OpenGL ES 2 on a desktop PC that behaves exactly as the real thing is not yet here; IIRC the OGL ES 2 simulation environment of Imagination has issues like that. Anyway no matter what you do, not developing on the targeted device itself will always create problems.

Somewhat off-topic, but I remember hearing ATI released a desktop driver with ES 2 support with WebGL in mind?