Both console and a PMP, GPX2 sets on to go retail within this year
Interview with Bum-Hong Lee from GPH
Early next year will be an unprecedented market war for hanheld consoles in Korea as Reigncom, Hyunwon, Gamepark and Gamepark Holdings will each release a handheld. And of them all GPH is already in finalizing stage and is about to go retail.
We've arranged a meeting with chief director Bum-Hong Lee of GPH.
PMP and games
Bum-Hong explains that GPX2 is both console and a PMP in one machine. In percentage of importance, PMP will be about half, games will have around 30~40% importance and the rest will be texts, image viewers and other various multimedia functions.
Bum-Hong says that GPX2 is not to be in a direct competition with hardware giants like Nintendo and Sony who's been obsolutely dominating the handheld industry, but rather to compete with PMP's that are being sold domestically at the moment. As GPX2 has many capability and power compared to other PMP's within the price range, he is confident that GPX2 will do well against them.
Edge in price and performence
What would be the strengths of GPX2, which is set to compete with PMPs? Price and general apeal, Bum-Hong says. GPX2 is to be around KRW180000 (USD180), and even if it were to get slightely expensive, they do not wish to price it more than KRW200000 (USD200). It's not only affordable, also by using standard AA batteries and SD memories, so even if a person was to buy a full set for GPX2 would not cost him extra wad of cash. And to achieve such price, we wish to minimize distribution margin as much as possible by selling on-line. They wanted to tackle the market with affordable price by eliminating the middle man which increases the price of the unit.
Consideration for games
GPX2's strength is not only a PMP functionality and price, it's gaming aspect is also a part of it's core design. Most of PMP companies have hard time designing their machine with game in mind, says Bum-Hong while showing us the machine.
The machine chief-director showed us had button layout that looked like that of Nintendo's but their stick had fantastic feel and control to it.
As seen in the picture above, GPX2 has a design cell phones or PMP manufacturing companies will not easily choose. First of all, the unit is not quite that small like other PMP's, and certain thickness is also required for such devices like stick to have certain good feel to it. It is certainly different from game phones or other portable players which uses metal-dome unlike GPX2 with membrane casing.
As much peripheral support as possible
When GP2X changed it's name to GPX2, they added TV-OUT and extra RAM on their machine which was often requested by users, and there also was many unseen changes that was made on GPX2. They created a cable that is to be used for TV-OUT, and they also made an extra order for parts so the users can have easy time making part replacement himself. GPH is also improving GPX2's LCD so it wont scratch like GBA does. They are also planning for GPX2 carrying case. As said, GPH is trying their best to make life easy for users of GPX2.
Importance of contents over hardware
Although GPH is make preperation for many things, they are still having difficulty of strengthning it's media contents. GPH cannot afford much money to invest in contents development, so Linux was their way to partially solve this problem. Open source will attract many different users of different preferences of various contents. They are at the moment reviewing the possibility of paying license fee for emulations.
It is only the beggining
GPX2 developement is uder very tight schedule, and as they were making changes mainly on the various user request, Bum-Hong says the had alot to discuss. It was not a technical problem or issue, but rather of manpower as the company was founded on very small number of people. But he says the worst of the problem was fighting over urges to use the latest technology vs finalizing the hardware and going retail.
(Author opinion goes here) blah blah
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Done.
Last one has a critical translation error.
Post this one plz.
Interview with Bum-Hong Lee from GPH
Early next year will be an unprecedented market war for hanheld consoles in Korea as Reigncom, Hyunwon, Gamepark and Gamepark Holdings will each release a handheld. And of them all GPH is already in finalizing stage and is about to go retail.
We've arranged a meeting with chief director Bum-Hong Lee of GPH.
PMP and games
Bum-Hong explains that GPX2 is both console and a PMP in one machine. In percentage of importance, PMP will be about half, games will have around 30~40% importance and the rest will be texts, image viewers and other various multimedia functions.
Bum-Hong says that GPX2 is not to be in a direct competition with hardware giants like Nintendo and Sony who's been obsolutely dominating the handheld industry, but rather to compete with PMP's that are being sold domestically at the moment. As GPX2 has many capability and power compared to other PMP's within the price range, he is confident that GPX2 will do well against them.
Edge in price and performence
What would be the strengths of GPX2, which is set to compete with PMPs? Price and general apeal, Bum-Hong says. GPX2 is to be around KRW180000 (USD180), and even if it were to get slightely expensive, they do not wish to price it more than KRW200000 (USD200). It's not only affordable, also by using standard AA batteries and SD memories, so even if a person was to buy a full set for GPX2 would not cost him extra wad of cash. And to achieve such price, we wish to minimize distribution margin as much as possible by selling on-line. They wanted to tackle the market with affordable price by eliminating the middle man which increases the price of the unit.
Consideration for games
GPX2's strength is not only a PMP functionality and price, it's gaming aspect is also a part of it's core design. Most of PMP companies have hard time designing their machine with game in mind, says Bum-Hong while showing us the machine.
The machine chief-director showed us had button layout that looked like that of Nintendo's but their stick had fantastic feel and control to it.
As seen in the picture above, GPX2 has a design cell phones or PMP manufacturing companies will not easily choose. First of all, the unit is not quite that small like other PMP's, and certain thickness is also required for such devices like stick to have certain good feel to it. It is certainly different from game phones or other portable players which uses metal-dome unlike GPX2 with membrane casing.
As much peripheral support as possible
When GP2X changed it's name to GPX2, they added TV-OUT and extra RAM on their machine which was often requested by users, and there also was many unseen changes that was made on GPX2. They created a cable that is to be used for TV-OUT, and they also made an extra order for parts so the users can have easy time making part replacement himself. GPH is also improving GPX2's LCD so it wont scratch like GBA does. They are also planning for GPX2 carrying case. As said, GPH is trying their best to make life easy for users of GPX2.
Importance of contents over hardware
Although GPH is make preperation for many things, they are still having difficulty of strengthning it's media contents. GPH cannot afford much money to invest in contents development, so Linux was their way to partially solve this problem. Open source will attract many different users of different preferences of various contents. They are at the moment reviewing the possibility of paying license fee for emulations.
It is only the beggining
GPX2 developement is uder very tight schedule, and as they were making changes mainly on the various user request, Bum-Hong says the had alot to discuss. It was not a technical problem or issue, but rather of manpower as the company was founded on very small number of people. But he says the worst of the problem was fighting over urges to use the latest technology vs finalizing the hardware and going retail.
(Author opinion goes here) blah blah
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Done.
Last one has a critical translation error.
Post this one plz.
