A Lot Of Xgp Kids Information

[JaqMs]

Here is a series of replies I recieved from Gamepark regarding the XGP Kids:

Thank you for contacting GAMEPARK Inc.

Here are some info. you have requested.

1. We are conducting "Open Beta test" in Aug. There are so many opinions about how we should conduct open beta test that we have not yet decided whether to provide the dev. kits to public or to selected people. However, it's most likely that we will provide the dev. kits to selected magazines, webzines and domestic customers.

2. If you are in US, you could purchase our product directly from GAMEPARK or at an offline or online store. The distributors in overseas market cannot be named at this time.

3. GPkids and GP32 uses different hardware. e.g. different resolution screen, different processors, different system memory. Due to the differences between the GPkids and GP32, the games for GP32 will not be playable in GPkids. However, since GPKiDS uses same software, if the games for GP32 were re-programmed to fit in 220x176 screen. they will be playable in GPKiDS.

If you have any further questions about our product, please don't hesitate to contact me at any time.

Regards,

Nathan

Thank you for contacting GAMEPARK Inc.



1. Beta tester will be checking if the device has any bugs. Also they will be evaluating the performance of GPKiDS and what are the things GAMEPARK can do to improve its performance and its convenient use.



2. There is no commercial game for GPKiDS available at this time. However, we are working with several game aggregators in Korea to port/develop several games for GPKiDS. So we believe that we will have some games for GPKiDS soon. Furthermore, because of the multi-functions of GPKiDS, we are seeking to adopt not only game content but entertainment and edutainment content on our system.



Our president has once said, I believe during an interview with one of the game magazines in Korea, "No Games No Game devices.” We strongly believe that all game devices including handhelds MUST have several "killer titles" in order to be successful. We might consider delaying the launch if we couldn't get "killer titles" for GPKiDS.



3. GPKiDS is not targeted to penetrate BIG, BLOCKBUSTER 3D games. The system was designed to target children and casual gamer demographic. According to our own research and the researches conducted by researching companies indicate that children and casual gamers refer simple and fun games instead of RPG type hard core games. Many simple, fun but addictive games are available in 220X176 resolutions and we are hoping to license or create the games our customers refer.



4. If you are not satisfied with the quality of GP32 Cinema, you probably won’t be satisfied with the performance of GPKiDS in terms of video. Although the LCD used in GPKiDS is much brighter than the LCD used in GP32, the system memory and main processor isn’t powerful enough to satisfy hard core gamer or heavy users. We are working very hard to make movie player, mp3P and image viewer work smoothly so that our customers would be feel that GPKiDS is worth more than $75.



I hope that these information would satisfy your curiosity. If you have any questions, feel free to contact GAMEPARK Inc.



Best regards,

Thank you for contacting GAMEPARK Inc.



The game market in Korea isn’t as big as the game market in US, Japan, or EU. Although we are Korean company, we will be focusing more on overseas market than domestic market.



About the Craig from www.gp2x.co.uk, is he the same person from www.gp32x.de? We are looking for the right person or organization for foreign support right now. It’s just that we weren’t able to find the “right” person yet. We know that existence of community which mostly deals with our products and their content is one of the key factors in the success of our products. We are trying our best to accomplish wide spread of our devices and their content.



Lastly, GPKiDS is designed to penetrate different niche market than GP32. GPKiDS’ target is children and casual game users who enjoy mobile games. As you might know, many fun, simple but addictive games of mobile handset platform are made to fit in the 220X176 resolution screen. As you have said, we realize that we could make ourselves in difficult situation by creating a handheld which isn’t fully retro-compatible to our earlier product. However, we strongly feel that our new product, GPKiDS, can successfully penetrate into the niche market that the big makers of handhelds neglected.



If you have any further questions, please, do not hesitate to contact me.



Best regards,



Nathan

So I better not hear any "Wow there is no chance the X system emulator will be able to run on this. There is no point in getting it." If there are some simple yet addicting games that hopefully get released for it, I would get it. Just hope this humble handheld will make an impression.

 

[iignotus]

Man, that 220x176 screen is this system's only bottleneck. But it is a HUGE bottleneck. Can't even emulate a GBA on this thing... it will be doomed to shitty cell phone ports and crappy remakes.

*sigh*

Hopefully the regular XGP mini will turn out better.

Oh yeah P.S. thanks a bunch for the info

 

[DeathSoul]

Nice. they dint stop yet. still might be a chance they might come out.
what kind of questions did you ask?
why are they making 3 systems?
when will they come out?

 

[sehs33]

....so that our customers would be feel that GPKiDS is worth more than $75....

So we can say this is the approximate price? guess it's cool

 

[critical]

1. We are conducting "Open Beta test" in Aug. There are so many opinions about how we should conduct open beta test that we have not yet decided whether to provide the dev. kits to public or to selected people. However, it's most likely that we will provide the dev. kits to selected magazines, webzines and domestic customers.

Just for a laugh, maybe they could provide dev. kits to developers.

 

[Orkie]

Who gives dev kits to developers anyway? If it is ~£50 or even less, I'd be interested in getting one as long as I can write my own stuff for it.

 

[Tobriand]

220*176? Well, they've screened out the emulation demographic on that one. Which could prove a cunning move if they're after taking it much more mainstream than seems likely to me, but otherwise seems to be shooting themselves in the foot. At least with regards to the GP32 demographic.

They are right about pick up and play titles, though. The only thing, as I see it, that they've crucially missed out on is that people don't *buy* a gaming system for the pick up and play titles. They buy a system for it's killer games. They just find themselves not playing the big names as much as the 5-minute-blast ones.

Put it like this: would you have bought, back in the day, a gameboy specifically for Tetris? No - you buy it for Mario or Zelda, play them for a couple of weeks, then discover Tetris is in the £5 bin at the local second hand shop and play it for months!

 

[critical]

Put it like this: would you have bought, back in the day, a gameboy specifically for Tetris?

I did. I eventually bought the Atari double game pack of Joust/Defender, but that was the extent of my Gameboy game collection. Used to use it on the 15 minute train journey each day, and never any other time.

That's what small, cheap, handhelds are good for IMHO.

 

[shinneri]

Nice work, JaqMs. I'll probably buy this just because it's so inexpensive.

 

[Montsubai]

Why do they type 'GPKiDS'

 

[Epicenter]

Well, perhaps if there is a scaler unit you can run emulators and software made for 320x240 displays. But it won't look very good. I'm looking forward to the XGP line but not this unit, really. The only thing that annoys me about the XGP line is the Mini's segmented D-Pad (versus the XGP's analog stick), the screen aspect ratio and the price of the full XGP unit.

 

[JaqMs]

Let me just say that games that you get for the XGP Kids will probably become very specialized. I mean specialized as in no matter how simple a game is, you see yourself coming back to it many times. This is opposed to many GP2X users and their emulators since they only play roms for 5 minutes, except for the 1-2 games they specifically enjoy. Well, XGP Kids games have the potential to become similar to those 1-2 games for other people.

Also, I have an idea. What if Gamepark were to drop the XGP Mini and use the money they were going to use in producing the Mini to drop the price of the XGP? The XGP and XGP Kids reach two very opposite end of the gamer spectrum, so I don't really see a point in a middle ground. And that way, if for some reason a bunch of devs decide to create emulators, etc for one of the XGP's, they will all select the same platform to develop on (XGP) since there is less restriction regarding the screen size.

 

[DaveC]

220*176? Well, they've screened out the emulation demographic on that one. Which could prove a cunning move if they're after taking it much more mainstream than seems likely to me, but otherwise seems to be shooting themselves in the foot. At least with regards to the GP32 demographic.

They are right about pick up and play titles, though. The only thing, as I see it, that they've crucially missed out on is that people don't *buy* a gaming system for the pick up and play titles. They buy a system for it's killer games. They just find themselves not playing the big names as much as the 5-minute-blast ones.

Well considering the tiny screen this unit is basically only good for 5 minute titles. Could you imagine playing this thing for 4 hours with a screen that small? You will get a headache playing it for more than 10 minutes anyway.

And that way, if for some reason a bunch of devs decide to create emulators, etc for one of the XGP's, they will all select the same platform to develop on (XGP) since there is less restriction regarding the screen size.

The XGP has the limit of the screen being the wrong aspect and a goofy resolution. Plus playing digital emulated games on an analog stick sucks anyway. The XGP is a poor choice for emulators, if they all should pick a system for emus it should be the GP2X not XGP. There is no advantage doing emulators on the XGP with the weird screen aspect and analog controls. The thing the XGP would be good for is 3D games and ports such as Quake and system specific games other than that, meh.

 

[JaqMs]

Well considering the tiny screen this unit is basically only good for 5 minute titles. Could you imagine playing this thing for 4 hours with a screen that small? You will get a headache playing it for more than 10 minutes anyway.

Let me reinterpret that:

Well considering the tiny screen this unit is basically only good for nothing. Could you imagine playing roms with a screen that small? You will get a headache playing roms for more than 10 minutes anyway.

Because everyone gets headaches playing cell phone games, that is why they buy them. NO more mentioning emulators for the XGP Kids beyond this post.

 

[iignotus]

Because everyone gets headaches playing cell phone games, that is why they buy them. NO more mentioning emulators for the XGP Kids beyond this post.

Speaking of emulators for the XGP Kids, this thing can only emulate the GB/GBC and I think Wonderswan with a screen like this. Maybe lynx too, but no one really plays that Can't even emulate the NES! There may be mention of scaling and whatnot, but I'm with Dave's opinion being that scaling would suck royally. I mean, older games required pixel-perfect accuracy and detailing. Getting rid of even a small percentage of those pixels would ruin the entire experience.

A company, like Gamepark, without large backing by professional companies, needs things like emulators and homebrew. With this shitty screen, only homebrew would be a worthwhile effort, and even then it would be a chore to fit good games into this tiny screen. GP should just scrap the kids model and focus on the other two, especially the mini.

 

[JaqMs]

The world does not revolve around 320x240...

 

[Dzz]

NO more mentioning emulators for the XGP Kids beyond this post.

Considering that "cheap emulation" is just about the only selling point that the XGP Kids has (and is pretty weak at that), I think it will be mentioned forever.

 

[JaqMs]

Forget it, you guys don't understand the premise of the XGP Kids a damn bit.

 

[Dzz]

Forget it at you guys don't understand the premise of the XGP Kids a damn bit.

You could explain it to us. So far the best guess I have is that it is supposed to sell to "kids and casual gamers", basically just like the dozen other cheap handheld devices that sell to kids and casual gamers. The difference is that those other devices come with 20-50 games pre-installed where this new device has zero.

Since that's a complete fiasco, the only hope they have to actually sell some is to a different market, and "cheap emulation" strikes me as the best alternative.

I'm sure you don't agree with this grim assessment, please let us know what the premise of the device is.

 

[Epicenter]

NO more mentioning emulators for the XGP Kids beyond this post.

Considering that "cheap emulation" is just about the only selling point that the XGP Kids has (and is pretty weak at that), I think it will be mentioned forever.

Shut up, you are a colossal pain in the ass. I'll discuss emulators as much as I damn well feel like, regardless of your desire to impose your own little rules on this thread you didn't create on this forum of which you're not a staff member.

Who wants to develop software for a machine using such an awful resolution that it can't run any other hardware like the rest of the XGP line without disgusting scaling? And won't run on the GP2X? And isn't compatible with the GP32? The machine's hardware specifications are anemic at best, it has no game library, and probably only gets a minimal selection of titles, most of which will apparently be things like simple puzzle games. Not exactly enthralling. Can you think of many engaging cell phone games? I definitely can't, and I wouldn't pay these prices to play them. As it stands not even ports of those exist.

I speak from a developer's standpoint as I considered development for this machine. But it doesn't make sense in that my projects are multiplatform in nature, the resolution is too nonstandard, the CPU is too slow, there isn't enough RAM and there is no graphical acceleration to make up for any of these shortcomings. The system isn't even compatible with old GP32 software and its resolution locks it out of the emulation scene unless you want to scale the display and make it look horrible; if the SoC even contains a scaler unit!

The XGP-KiDS is just a product that shouldn't exist; it'd likely make the XGP Mini and XGP much less expensive in the end. Hell, I'll be the first to tell you there shouldn't even be two XGP models, there should be ONE. The current arrangement brings excellent hardware to the table but in a ridiculous configuration that makes the whole platform unnecessarily complicated from development and end-user angles. I understand its premise, it's for original content and games, not emulators. It's also not made to appeal to hardcore gamers. It's not even made to appeal to YOU, Jaq'. But it's an unrealistic goal and won't get the machine off the ground. The GP32 would have gone nowhere without emulation to get a decent user base together, and the same is true for the GP2X. If you can honestly tell me otherwise with a straight face in light of the plain and obvious truth, you're a liar or an outright fool.