Welcome to the Panasonic Jungle, a portable handheld

[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

 

[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?