Tapwave Zodiac closing shop

[Shifty Geezer]

Shame. Seemed like a good system to me.

We are sorry to inform you that the Zodiac business was discontinued and service and support are no longer available as of July 25th 2005.

http://www.tapwave.com/

 

[mech]

Yeah, seemed fairly shmicko. When's Gizmondo next? :/

 

[Fox5]

Can't say I didn't expect it, considering its primary selling point was its power, and that's been long outdated. Its other selling point was its game controller like shape, which I think was a very nice design for a PDA in general, but it never got very many games.

But anyhow, its powerful 2d graphics chip was quickly outdated by 3d graphics chips(maybe not quickly, Zodiac was 2003 and the first 3d chips appeared in late 2004 maybe?), and I don't think the price ever dropped.

And as far as a game handheld went, I think Nintendo DS and PSP ended that dream.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As a game handheld I felt it's interface options better than the other. One large, hires touchscreen has more potential for touch games than DS's small one IMO. Of course Tapwave couldn't work with a loss-leader model like the others, so it was never set to become big. Same for Gizmondo. Consoles can only be entered into by getting the hardware out there, which needs a big and ifluencial company. Though it's still nice to see people try