I''m Writing A Letter

[OrR]

Justifying a price above 30$ for a downloadable handheld game is going to be difficult. Most things will probably be at home in the 5$ to 20$ range. To go beyond that you'd have to come up with some pretty impressive stuff. Of course, with the Pandora's hardware, you can do very impressive stuff indeed.

 

[RajTakhar]

some good and negative points in this thread.

If someone wants to contact a software development company, they should not be knocked back for doing so - there are bound to be a company out there which can see potential revenue streams even if the title is a secure download from the net

Think of business cases for alot of small software houses doing well supporting mobile phone market - Symbian, Window Mobile, etc.

The Pandora has been well designed and hopefully its end usage will exceed all expectations and make others think about porting stuff to it

 

[Svartalf]

It's more probable that they hand us the source, say "do it yourself" and sell us the data files. Of course, that would be a perfectly fine solution.

No, it's more probable if they're amenable to letting us do it, have us PAY for the privilege of having even a sniff of the source and then buying the data files as well.

Game code access oftentimes isn't cheap and the effort to get it is often NOT pretty.

Is there any particular reason why someone would develop exclusively for Pandora and not make sure their game could work on Linux, Windows and Mac as well? Wouldn't that make the figures more favourable?

There's little reason to do it that way, make it Pandora exclusive, that is. It might make some small sense to make it a timed exclusive for 6 or so months and then release for other platforms. Moreover, if you're coding this game to work on the Pandora, unless you're using some unique feature (I'd advise someone NOT doing it unless it really does make or break the game over it...) then you've got a Mac and Linux version with minimal effort. Done right (as in using SDL), you can even target the iPhone in addition to the Pandora (that's what's happening with Caster... ) .

Indies see the sense in this.

The big players don't see the sense in this because they're expending ~5-10% extra effort for something that they don't see that there'll ever be any return on. You've got to double or more the amount of money they put into it before they're even remotely interested.

Fuck emulators, there will be a lot of quality free and commercial indie games on this device. That's not wishful thinking but a solid prediction.

Heh... Besides, the indie stuff, while the quality is variable, produces quite a bit of better titles, even if the production values sometimes may be lower than the glitzy commercial stuff. It's more fun to play.

 

[OrR]

It's more probable that they hand us the source, say "do it yourself" and sell us the data files. Of course, that would be a perfectly fine solution.

No, it's more probable if they're amenable to letting us do it, have us PAY for the privilege of having even a sniff of the source and then buying the data files as well.

Game code access oftentimes isn't cheap and the effort to get it is often NOT pretty.

Usually, yes. However, we were talking about Doom 3 and I remember that id Software were planning to make that code open source just as they did with their previous games.

 

[Miner49er]

Even though I've ordered one, I would be amazingly surprised if there was any commercial software for this device. I would love it if there was - I've been playing Left 4 Dead a lot recently and I would buy iANY zombie related FPS instantly.

BUT, I can't see it happening. Nintendo, Sony, Sega all those guys have MASSIVE budgets just for advertising and getting the product in peoples faces. What does Pandora have? Word of mouth? Blogs?

Hey, who knows, maybe this device will become like the, who was it (who allegedly became famous through myspace) , Arctic Monkeys of the hand-held console?

I will be happy if I can play some classic game and tinker to my hearts content. Hell, if it gets me writing some C++/OpenGL stuff then even better. This device is a nerds toy with the POTENTIAL of becoming something a lot more but that will take some real luck AND serious enthusiasm from people that matter.

 

[trats20050]

Was there any commercial games made for the gp2x and if so how did it go?

 

[gruso]

Of course we'll see commercial games. We've already had numerous posts on these boards from the devs who are making them. We won't see big budget AAA titles like the mainstream consoles, but that doesn't mean we won't get good quality. The indie commercial scene is on fire at the moment, just look at WiiWare/XBLA/Apple Store for proof.

trats - There were a number of commercial games for the GP2X. Most notable were Wind & Water, and Payback. I don't think anyone made millions, or much at all, but they were popular titles. The GP2X scene tends to have respect for these developers too, so piracy wasn't rampant.

Wind & Water is one of the commercial titles confirmed for Pandora.