Hypothetical Situation: If 3000 Is All That Ever Get Made...

[Alpha2]

Stay with me now, Not saying this will be the case and god forbid this actually happen but assuming that the first run is all that ever gets made, lets say that the first run dosent kick back enough money in the end or maybe some other crazy unforeseen catastrophe occures. Would the first run be enough to gaurantee devs remain interested in the Pandora?

Sure they're not all in it for the money but the success of a platform is usually messured in how many people actually have it. Is 3k enough to make it worth a developer's time to support it? Or would they simply move over to GPH's Wiz? Is the Wiz similar enough to the Pandora that a port would be easy to do thus saving it from an early demize? (likewise in the other direction too, I mean we wouldnt even BE here if it werent for Game Park or the various key individuals that created the GP32 and 2X so it would be great if Development for the Pandora could benefit that platform as well if it needed it.) of course I'm not trying to say there's any competition, if the GP32 and 2x could co-exist as long as they did with the gap in power between them surely the Pandora and Wiz can too for many years.

Would Craig, Evildragon and the rest sell their shares to another company and let them deal with the system if things didn't work out or would they choose to retain their positions?

As an end user, what would make the system worth it to you if development suddenly stopped? That is to say; what would the system need to have in your eyes if it never had anything else after that for you to say it dosent matter and you're glad you have it? I mean in the case of my gamecube, I said if I can have 10 exclusive games worth playing before it kicks the bucket then it would have paid for itself at the 200 bucks I paid for it (in the end I had atleast 20). It dosent have to be games or emmulators, maybe even just the right applications or functional support that make it worth paying almost as much as a low end model PS3 to own it.


Just a thought about the future, I mean we all want it to be a gangbusting hit, but it never hurts to postulate possible alternate outcomes.

 

[Pleng]

If I fell over and knocked myself out today, would there be somebody around to dial 999?

If I study really hard for the next 3 years at uni, will I get a first?

If I cook some food tonight, will it taste good?

If I buy a lottery ticket, will I win?

If my glass falls on the floor, will i break?



All depend on far too many variables to make a reasonably educated guess, don't they?

 

[Gaeryc]

If 3000 would be all they made, it would not be so big deal to me. Of course I would cry but it would be worth it's price anyway because of:

1) mplayer, I would have the best pmp I could have.
2) firefox, I could surf the net.
3) quick ports of emulators, at least things like megadrive, playstation, supernintendo etc. would work.

We will be having those in the launch or very soon after it.

 

[chris_r]

300 won't be all that is made. Craigix has said that they've ordered for more than one batch of pandoras to be made to lower their price.

 

[belthos]

They have already ported emulators, not polished i supposed but running for at least the amiga, ps1, and it will run linux out of the box.

Compare it to the gizmondo which had and for all i know still has a rabid following with what I read was only 7000 units sold, this will do far better.

Its a niche gaming device, and for some personal pda device. The real target audience for such a device financially speaking is middle aged gamers like myself for whom this is a great toy and cheap. It will cost me 1.25 days pay to obtain and I'm most likely in the mid range of income for middle aged techies.

These folks have manufactured a better mouse trap and I expect everyone around the world will be shocked at the mice they catch when it hits the market.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was for hand held gaming what the eeepc was for lowcost mini portable laptops.

They have an 80/20 rule 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people.
Truth is in the linux community 99% of the work is done by 1% of the people.
So long as 1% of the 3000 wound up in developer hands we'd have everything covered to make it a success.

Belthos.

In other words a community of 3000 , 300 or 300,000 users isn't my concern.
Just give me a device with 5 or 10 good developers who think it's cool and want to play with it and the rest will take care of itself.

 

[Babrios]

+1 to what Gaeryc and belthos said.

Before I made up my mind, I considered that scenario and asked myself if that would keep me from preordering. And the answer was no, not at all. I would eat my hat if only 3000 were ever made and I did not get one.
Its not the same thing as with normal new gaming consols. They are either a success or failure, because if they don't sell, not many games will be released for them. Pandora cannot fail for the user, because its usability does not depend on money-oriented big companies developing for it.
I'm sure, all the devs from the gp2x homebrew scene will get one. And they tend to develop for what they use/need for themself, and Pandora is so fascinating a hardware, it will keep them interested for a long time.
We will have awesome emus already on release day, like ps1, amiga, genesys/megadrive, atari etc. The list is growing. Even with only the few I mentioned the potential game library already is... well, I have to guess, around the 2000 or 3000 mark? (Its nearly 1000 for ps1 alone, thats for sure).
And the general usefulness of the Pandora as a linux mini computer does not depend on commercial success either.

So, like I see it:
andora1: CANNOT FAIL! NO MATTER WHAT!

 

[Nutty_Pumpkin]

If only 3000 get made then the people who have them will
Be very happy but this is also good for The Wiz because
No one will buy pandora and have to buy the wiz.
I think its a fair battle (not if the pandora gets cheaper tho)
Its andora1: vs Wiz (typed on iphone sorry about spelling
And grammar)

 

[Mutilator]

judging by the amount of posts about the pandora i would imagine there def will be more than 3000. most of the key devs already have a dev board or have plans for developing on the pandora, so really we know that their will be some great emulators.

QUOTE
(Its nearly 1000 for ps1 alone, thats for sure).


renember also this thing isnt just for people who want to play playstation games the keyboard means dos, amiga, amstrad etc. can all be emulated in a much more enjoyable way than a virtual keyboard.

 

[bustaballs]

What if a chicken crosses the road and lightning strikes it and it catches fire after it's head falls off next to a gas station which explodes and set flames to a near-by neighborhood which causes the local fire department, the ghost busters, the power rangers, and the ninja turtles to swarm all at once to handle the problem until Godzilla attacks and ruins it all.

the point is that it's never the animal's fault if it bites you.

 

[Alpha2]

If 3000 would be all they made, it would not be so big deal to me. Of course I would cry but it would be worth it's price anyway because of:

1) mplayer, I would have the best pmp I could have.
2) firefox, I could surf the net.
3) quick ports of emulators, at least things like megadrive, playstation, supernintendo etc. would work.

We will be having those in the launch or very soon after it.

Yeah I think this is probably the best way to look at it, mean with a wifi device that has TV out and all these potential emulators as well as decent applications like a portable video player that might possibly play anything you throw at it unlike the chinese devices that come out every other week in a market that can't even get itself together to support MKV at the same time as MP4 and FLV, it is probably already a killer device. But it's the little things you want to see accomplished after the fact, like optimizations to squeeze everything you can out of the emulators and bug fixes, I mean it'd suck if it can do all these things but randomly freezes or crashes and there's no one around to do anything about it.

Not that I'm worried so much of course just like everyone else I want to be inline for the first batch too based on what it seems prepared to do in the market. Like I said I'm just posing a random question.


Has it yet been confirmed with will be available at launch? I know a lot of people say MAME,PSX,NES,SNES,GBA,GEN,Amiga and a few others but will we have the TG16,SegaCD,lynx,JAG, etc? (most of the interesting machines below the PSX generation) Or are these still just things people are talking about with little visible movment?

 

[Mutilator]

going by the videos firefox posted on his youtube account i would imagine that there will be a jag emulator at launch even if it was un-optimised

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe_R787gREc < jag emulator on pandora

 

[Blah]

If 3000 is all that ever get made...
...then we take it to Dragon's Den :lol:

 

[Megamixman]

If 3000 are the only ones that ever made, those people will likley sell them to linux savvy individuals. As long as we get a kernel. Maemo should work quite well on the Pandora. Look at everything it can do. Not to mention that Nokia announced that the next gen Internet Tablet will use the OMAP3 Platform and will have full support for the DSP and GPU, so we may only need the wifi driver for the Pandora.

 

[txd]

Its not gonna happen that they only make 3000, because I'm gonna buy the remaining if there are any. :lol:

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

What if Nazis had flying ponies during World War II, would the Allies still have been able to land at Normandy? :rolleyes: This is just silly.

 

[kanzlr]

What if Nazis had flying ponies during World War II, would the Allies still have been able to land at Normandy? :rolleyes: This is just silly.

they didn't?
I have to go and check SWOTL...

 

[cbp]

...They have an 80/20 rule 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people.
Truth is in the linux community 99% of the work is done by 1% of the people.
So long as 1% of the 3000 wound up in developer hands we'd have everything covered to make it a success.

Belthos.

In other words a community of 3000 , 300 or 300,000 users isn't my concern.
Just give me a device with 5 or 10 good developers who think it's cool and want to play with it and the rest will take care of itself.

I don't know about you guys, but I'd be willing to donate or pay a bit more for the console to get some of these dedicated developers to work full time on the pandora and pay them for their work.
If they can work full time without the need to have another job, things would get done a lot faster.
Of course, always keep things open source.

 

[douglasamcintosh]

What if Nazis had flying ponies during World War II, would the Allies still have been able to land at Normandy? :rolleyes: This is just silly.

Yes. We would have developed flying pony poo shields. Saving Private Ryan never would have been made though.

I'd be quite happy if just one got made.

Mine

 

[Fishbong]

Even if there was no Pandora, i wouldn´t buy a Wiz. At least not straight away.

 

[telegramguy]

I don't know about you guys, but I'd be willing to donate or pay a bit more for the console to get some of these dedicated developers to work full time on the pandora and pay them for their work.
If they can work full time without the need to have another job, things would get done a lot faster.
Of course, always keep things open source.

Even if a dev got $33 for a copy of a piece of software that sold to everyone of the 3000 sold, he'd only make $100k for his work.

Divide that by the number of developers and none of these guys would make it their day jobs even if everyone donated / paid for Pandora emulators / apps.