Helix to take on GBA!

[Deepak]

Ex-Palm Officials Offer Portable Video Game System

Ex-Palm Officials Offer Portable Video Game System
Mon May 5, 1:39 PM ET Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Ben Berkowitz

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A company started by former senior executives from handheld computer maker Palm Inc. (NasdaqALM - news) on Monday unveiled a handheld product code-named "Helix" that combines video gaming, music and the organizer from the Palm operating system.

The company, named Tapwave, was founded two years ago by former Palm vice president of worldwide product development Peng Lim and vice president of product management Byron Connell.

It plans to enter a marketplace -- portable video gaming -- that in the last few months has ballooned.

Lim serves as president and chief executive of Tapwave, while Connell is senior vice president of marketing. Other top executives are Marian Cauwet, the vice president of engineering who held the same role at Palm; and sales head David Wenning, also a Palm veteran.

Pricing and availability details for the Helix have not yet been made public, but what is known is that the company boasts a high-profile lineup of hardware and software partners.

Among the hardware companies contributing products and engineering to Helix are ATI Technologies Inc. (Toronto:ATY.TO - news), Sony Corp (news - web sites). (6758.T), Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - news) and Yamaha Corp. (7951.T)

Games publishers who have already agreed to license some of their top titles for the platform include Activision Inc. (Nasdaq:ATVI - news), Infogrames Inc. (Nasdaq:IFGM - news) and Midway Games Inc. (NYSE:MWY - news).

The company has also licensed the PalmOS operating system from Palm subsidiary PalmSource and game development tools from Fathammer.

Market research firms have pegged total video game hardware and software sales at $10.4 billion in 2002 in the United States alone, and global hardware and software sales in 2003 are expected to top $30 billion.

'MORE SOPHISTICATED GAMER'

"Nobody was addressing the need of the more sophisticated gamer in a mobile sense," Connell told Reuters recently.

Connell and Lim said the target audience for the Helix consists of people 18 years to 34 years old who have largely "graduated" from Nintendo (news - web sites) Co. Ltd.'s (7974.OS) Game Boy Advance portable gaming unit.

The Game Boy platform has had a stranglehold on the portable gaming market for well over a decade, handily defeating any and all comers, including long-gone devices with names like GameGear, TurboDuo and Lynx.

But the portable market has become increasingly crowded again. Nintendo is selling two Game Boys, the Advance and the Advance SP, and Finnish cell phone maker Nokia (news - web sites) (NOK1V.HE) is preparing to launch a cell phone and game deck combination device called the N-Gage.

The Tapwave executives hope to compete with those two units on the basis of superior technology.

The Helix boasts twice the color palate of the Game Boy and nearly 16 times that of the N-Gage. It offers a screen resolution well sharper than either one and a much larger screen size.

Connell said the device will play full-motion video in a number of formats, as well as music in the MP3 format. It will also ship with a photo viewer and all the productivity applications that are part of the Palm OS.

................

Any reactions!>?

 

[Ty]

And still, no MBX.

 

[Deepak]

MBX????

 

[Mariner]

PowerVR MBX - should be ideal for handheld games machines.

 

[Grall]

Oh my god, Nintendo's gonna steamroll right over these poor suckers, and laugh while doing it.

They may just as well file for chapter 11 right away to save themselves time and money, coz their gadget's going to crash and burn and we all know it.


*G*

 

[Deepak]

Why doesnt Sony or MS launch handhelds.....now they have enough experience and money and will...and it is definitely easier to design a handheld than a PS3 or XB....!!!

 

[Tagrineth]

Why doesnt Sony or MS launch handhelds.....now they have enough experience and money and will...and it is definitely easier to design a handheld than a PS3 or XB....!!!

Fuck no, it isn't. Power consumption is a serious issue for a handheld.

 

[London Geezer]

Why doesnt Sony or MS launch handhelds.....now they have enough experience and money and will...and it is definitely easier to design a handheld than a PS3 or XB....!!!

Fuck no, it isn't. Power consumption is a serious issue for a handheld.

i'm sure it is, but is it more than a headache than trying to make a chip that pushes a billion polygons per second.... or trying to squeeze 500M transistors in a bit of silicon and make it work properly....

see my point..... dont think the efforts being made to even design the PS3 and the amount of resources put into the project are even to be compared to that of a handheld....

 

[jandar]

Nintendo has way more experience with handhelds than MS or Sony could hope to have for a few more years.


Like Tagrineth said, power conusmption is most important.

Gameboy Advance SP = 10 hours with the light, 18 hours without.

Hard to beat that, plus not to mention the vast number of Gameboy/Gameboy Advance games out there now.

 

[Tagrineth]

i'm sure it is, but is it more than a headache than trying to make a chip that pushes a billion polygons per second.... or trying to squeeze 500M transistors in a bit of silicon and make it work properly....

see my point..... dont think the efforts being made to even design the PS3 and the amount of resources put into the project are even to be compared to that of a handheld....

Actually, I'd say it's probably a different kind of hard, because in a handheld, you have to get good performance out of the equivalent of two AA batteries to be taken seriously - 3.0V of sustained power, and you have to make it last, too (remember Game Gear? 3 hours on 6 AA's... ). i.e. you need equipment that needs very little power and does a whole lot with it.

 

[London Geezer]

i'm sure it is, but is it more than a headache than trying to make a chip that pushes a billion polygons per second.... or trying to squeeze 500M transistors in a bit of silicon and make it work properly....

see my point..... dont think the efforts being made to even design the PS3 and the amount of resources put into the project are even to be compared to that of a handheld....

Actually, I'd say it's probably a different kind of hard, because in a handheld, you have to get good performance out of the equivalent of two AA batteries to be taken seriously - 3.0V of sustained power, and you have to make it last, too (remember Game Gear? 3 hours on 6 AA's... ). i.e. you need equipment that needs very little power and does a whole lot with it.

fair enough.... they could just put plutonium in them.... im sure they would last quite a bit.... little problem might be that if u drop ur little Gameboy and it breaks, the whole city would be contaminated.... but oh well that's the price to pay

 

[Blade]

The Helix is for more sophisticated gamers who have "graduated" from the Game Boy Advance..? How do you graduate from a f***ing handheld that just came out? What is this, another knock at Nintendo's image (kiddy) except this time at GBA instead of GCN? Well, I can say this.. their propaganda is sadly working on some mainstream gamers in America.. *sigh*

Anyways.. what do FMV video, a bigger color palette, and PDA-esque functions have to do with sophisticated gaming?

Last I checked, good games with solid gameplay were ultimately the driving force of the gaming industry and Nintendo's business especially.. not the ability to play MP3's on your handheld..

 

[Goldni]

Connell and Lim said the target audience for the Helix consists of people 18 years to 34 years old who have largely "graduated" from Nintendo (news - web sites) Co. Ltd.'s (7974.OS) Game Boy Advance portable gaming unit.

*looks at drivesr license that reads 32 years old..and goes back to playing Golden Sun Lost Age on SP* now that's sophisticated gaming my friend.

 

[Almasy]

The Helix is for more sophisticated gamers who have "graduated" from the Game Boy Advance..? How do you graduate from a f***ing handheld that just came out? What is this, another knock at Nintendo's image (kiddy) except this time at GBA instead of GCN? Well, I can say this.. their propaganda is sadly working on some mainstream gamers in America.. *sigh*

Well, you have to admit Nintendo products are designed with kids in mind. I don´t really agree with the statement of "graduating", but if they´re capable of delivirng a machine that can properly display a Castlevania game in 2D, unlike some "other" handheld, then I´m in.

Of course, most probably this machine will crash and burn because of Nintendo´s strong grip on the handheld market.

 

[Tagrineth]

Well, you have to admit Nintendo products are designed with kids in mind. I don´t really agree with the statement of "graduating", but if they´re capable of delivirng a machine that can properly display a Castlevania game in 2D, unlike some "other" handheld, then I´m in.

Eh?

Are you saying GBA can't do Castlevania in proper 2D? Because there are "three games" out that say it can.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Sony would be seeing every corner when it were to launch a handheld...
But a visual Memory like device (Dreamcast) would have a change for survival... and even succes
If only the pocket playstation was released in Europe...

 

[zurich]

I think if/when Sony releases a handheld, it will be truly amazing.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

I think if/when Sony releases a handheld, it will be truly amazing.

they havent managed to get thier console hardware up to snuff yet, the only thing the PS2 has going for it is the amazing games.. they still havent learned how to get 4 controller ports on a system yet. Maybe when they do that, they can think about handhelds.

I dont see handhelds going the way people want them to, want to see the results of a handheld going fully 3d, get a portable tv, hook your PSX to it, squint and strain and try to enjoy the experience.. and then remember that making it handheld would only be smaller, and harder to see, there is a reason why most GBA games have remained sidescrollers, they dont require you to see things in the background.

 

[Almasy]

Well, you have to admit Nintendo products are designed with kids in mind. I don´t really agree with the statement of "graduating", but if they´re capable of delivirng a machine that can properly display a Castlevania game in 2D, unlike some "other" handheld, then I´m in.

Eh?

Are you saying GBA can't do Castlevania in proper 2D? Because there are "three games" out that say it can.

All of them look either terrible, or sound terrible, especially when compared to 6 year old or so SOTN. I want something beyond that, not some attempt at trying to recreate something similar using underpowered hardware, but that´s just me.

The games are still great of course (well, only HoD, control in CotM was broken), but it still angers me to see the game´s graphics and sound so watered down.

 

[Tagrineth]

All of them look either terrible, or sound terrible, especially when compared to 6 year old or so SOTN. I want something beyond that, not some attempt at trying to recreate something similar using underpowered hardware, but that´s just me.

The games are still great of course (well, only HoD, control in CotM was broken), but it still angers me to see the game´s graphics and sound so watered down.

Jeeze. Well, wrt sound, keep in mind that SOTN is on a bloody CD which can hold 650-700MB max, versus HoD and CotM being in 8MB cartridges. Same with graphics, you can simply store more frames on a CD than on a cart.

You're too critical, that's all. There's nothing wrong with GBA's hardware in terms of running a Castlevania game, it's just that the 'modern' CV style needs a LOT of space. In fact, you really shouldn't complain, because the GBA games are about the same rough 'size' as SotN, just not as detailed, and rightly so, due to space restrictions.

Or are you suggesting GBA use a CD drive and have ~2-4 hours' battery life?