Is It Me Or Is The Wiz Doomed

[adolobe]

Im a concerned Wiz owner to say the least. I just checked out the new games on the WIZ website to be released soon and they are all 2d outdated looking games, Legend of Swords looks like its from 1994 and Decided 3 doesn't look so hot either. If they are boasting 3d capabilities for the system how come there is nothing to show it off from the commercial side. GLQuake is a good starting example.

But what does the Wiz at $180 have over the Dingo A320 at less than half the cost besides a touch screen and a better performing PSX emu.

Dont get me wrong I love my Wiz and I love my Dingo A320, but I just dont see how Gamepark expects to survive now with the A320 at half the cost. I dont consider the wiz direct competition to the Pandora but I do see the Dingo as its direct competition and value for the buck it looks to be he winner.

Who else is concerned about the current state of the Wiz?

 

[iprice]

The Wiz is still in its very early days and no console ever has had a massive number of excellent new games in it's first year (or more). With Wiz you've got emulation, which at least gives you a huge back catalogue to play. Homebrew is trickling through nicely, although I suspect that once Pandora arrives many devs will move over to that.

We don't know what GPH will provide in the future (if anything worthwhile), so I wouldn't rely entirely on them. I've never really expected anything more of the Wiz than I've got, and what I've got I think is fantastic. Anything over and above this will be a bonus.

GPH will however be releasing the network adapter soon, that may well instill a bit more life into the Wiz. I've got a game in development that I'd like to use the network adapter for - I suppose other devs will too.

Don't forget that some/many devs may be waiting for the Wiz app store to arrive, so that they can create/release their games and apps on that and actually receive a financial reward for their efforts, and believe me, even the simplest app can take many, many hours to create.

The Wiz is still in its infancy, it would be foolish to write it off just yet. Time will, however, tell.

 

[aho]

It's a homebrew handheld. As long as I can continue to mess around with it and talk with others about it (join us on #wizdev@efnet), it does everything I wanted/expected. This stuff is the fun part for me.

 

[DaveC]

Well the Wiz has a better contrast screen with better blacks and more even "lighting". It has a Touchscreen and 3D GPU (that no one uses). But Cheap always seems to win at the end so have fun with your cheapoo Dingoo.

 

[Ghaleon]

I bought my Wiz primarily for emulation, and I am very happy with the emulators released for it already. I also have a few homebrew games for it that are quite fun. If nothing else is released for the Wiz, I will be satisfied, even if no emulators for the Intellivision or the Odyssey are released. Most of the time what I played on my Game Boy Micro was Ms. Pac-Man anyway.

 

[migo]

I'd say the big thing with the Wiz is when it came out, plus some divisive issues. Some people think the dual dpad design was cool, others hated it, and still dislike the compromise. That's going to have people sitting on the fence. The tearing issue is also divisive, some people say it's a huge problem and can only be fixed with extra coding or a performance hit, and others say it's not a big deal. That'll get more people on the fence.

What I'd say goes in the Wiz's favour is the lack of hackability of the later PSPs. HEN looks OK, but there's no more CFW, so the Wiz is much more convenient in that department. The next direct competitors are the DSi and the iPod Touch. The Wiz has the advantage of physical controls over the Touch, although particularly with the 3rd Generation one the specs don't compete. With the DSi, there aren't any control advantages, but there are specs. R4i should make homebrew and emulation pretty easy though, so again, it's kind of hard.

The question would be whether you want a Wiz or a DSi/DS Lite. The Lite is cheaper, has an existing software base, and the homebrew community for it isn't going anywhere (unlike the PSP one which seems to be dying given it doesn't work on newer consoles) since people will always be buying it. There's speculation about Wiz devs moving to the Pandora, so there's the sense that getting a Wiz is like getting a Nokia phone. You get what you get when you buy it, and you can't count on anything more coming out for it. If you're very happy with it as is, then it seems good, but if you're banking on more development for it, there's a chance of being disappointed.

With these factors it doesn't look like it'll turn out terribly well for it. There's more competition for the Wiz than when the GP32 was released, so the market is more split up.

 

[Audi]

I have a 16 gb card loaded with games on loads of systems. if i use my wiz for nothing more than playing these games i really wouldnt give a toss.
When did Koreans start making good games anyway?

 

[DurTahar]

I don't see why people throw out 'touch screen' like it's not a big deal. As someone who really likes scummvm, I have ZERO issues paying extra for a touch screen. That's a huge selling point to me.

 

[promisedplanet]

But what does the Wiz at $180 have over the Dingo A320 at less than half the cost besides a touch screen and a better performing PSX emu.

I don't know, I can't imagine playing Robotron: 2084 without a right D-pad.

 

[Electric Moose]

My Wiz is still on its way from Play-Asia so I have no hands-on experience with it. What made me buy it was those reasons many have stated above: vast amount of emulators without the extra hassle of hacking through updates that try to disable them (à la PSP and Nintendo DSi), functions as an mp3 player, the community is somewhat more established than with Dingoo (at least this is the impression I've got), considerably cheaper than the Pandora (which has been "almost ready to be mass-produced" for quite some time), touch-screen support (especially for adventure games on the PC) and the console in general is - from what I've read - considerably easy to use.

I decided not to order a Dingoo A320 because it was both less powerful than the Wiz (here's hoping we get a refined PSX emulator some time in the future) and the community didn't seem as sturdy as Wiz's. I'll just have to cross my fingers that the devs don't migrate from Wiz to other available hand-helds.

 

[DaveC]

The question would be whether you want a Wiz or a DSi/DS Lite. The Lite is cheaper, has an existing software base, and the homebrew community for it isn't going anywhere (unlike the PSP one which seems to be dying given it doesn't work on newer consoles) since people will always be buying it. There's speculation about Wiz devs moving to the Pandora, so there's the sense that getting a Wiz is like getting a Nokia phone. You get what you get when you buy it, and you can't count on anything more coming out for it. If you're very happy with it as is, then it seems good, but if you're banking on more development for it, there's a chance of being disappointed.

With these factors it doesn't look like it'll turn out terribly well for it. There's more competition for the Wiz than when the GP32 was released, so the market is more split up.

I don't see any DS as a viable emulation platform unless all you want to run is Coleco and Speccy. The big reason is that the DS only has 256 x 192 resolution wich is inadequate for anything such as Megadrive, NeoGeo, SNES, PC engine, MAME etc. Yes you can crop the screen or scale it down but those options make the games look like shit as you lose information. Why sacrifice native resolution capability if you don't have to?

 

[christo930]

The question would be whether you want a Wiz or a DSi/DS Lite. The Lite is cheaper, has an existing software base, and the homebrew community for it isn't going anywhere (unlike the PSP one which seems to be dying given it doesn't work on newer consoles) since people will always be buying it. There's speculation about Wiz devs moving to the Pandora, so there's the sense that getting a Wiz is like getting a Nokia phone. You get what you get when you buy it, and you can't count on anything more coming out for it. If you're very happy with it as is, then it seems good, but if you're banking on more development for it, there's a chance of being disappointed.

With these factors it doesn't look like it'll turn out terribly well for it. There's more competition for the Wiz than when the GP32 was released, so the market is more split up.

I don't see any DS as a viable emulation platform unless all you want to run is Coleco and Speccy. The big reason is that the DS only has 256 x 192 resolution wich is inadequate for anything such as Megadrive, NeoGeo, SNES, PC engine, MAME etc. Yes you can crop the screen or scale it down but those options make the games look like shit as you lose information. Why sacrifice native resolution capability if you don't have to?

I am considering an upgrade to my gp2x and a used psp is an option, but I hate the idea of having to fight with the machine to get it going and then fight with it again if I play a commercial game on it that fucks with the firmware. The one big advantage for the psp is the availability of movies on umd. OTOH, I don't think the screen is very good and would be as useless as the gp2x for reading, then there is the fact that a used psp might come with a battery that doesn't hold a charge very well. How about the wiz, is it any good for reading? I know, it's kind of subjective... Does anyone have a gp2x and a wiz? If so, is the wiz screen better for reading than the gp2x? What about the gp32 which has a great screen for reading?

Chris

 

[Sitizen]

I am considering an upgrade to my gp2x and a used psp is an option, but I hate the idea of having to fight with the machine to get it going and then fight with it again if I play a commercial game on it that fucks with the firmware. The one big advantage for the psp is the availability of movies on umd. OTOH, I don't think the screen is very good and would be as useless as the gp2x for reading, then there is the fact that a used psp might come with a battery that doesn't hold a charge very well. How about the wiz, is it any good for reading? I know, it's kind of subjective... Does anyone have a gp2x and a wiz? If so, is the wiz screen better for reading than the gp2x? What about the gp32 which has a great screen for reading?

I don't own a GP2X, but the Wiz has the best screen for reading I've ever seen on any portable device. But if watching movies is a major purpose for you the PSP might be the better choice, not because of UMD, I think it will die soon, but the screen is so much bigger which is important for movies IMHO.

 

[hardyx]

The Wiz and Dingoo A320 can look the same outside, but the first have more advantages. Wiz has an ARM processor and 3D accelerator, this is important because there are many open source programs (many emulators) optimized for ARM. Wiz suports more standart and cheap SDHC cards with to 32 Gb of capacity.

There is a great community from GP2X working and many knowledge about this machines. Is more easy to program Wiz because you can make in many languages like C++, Fenix, Bennu, ... Is easy to port the programs from Pocketpc (sdl) or GP2X to Wiz because they use the same processor (ARM). Is more easy to execute all the programs in Wiz (comparing with Dingux). You don't have to change the firmware to make this.

Dingoo have three good things: radio, good as MP4 and cheap price.
If you want more homebrew of you like to see more powerful emulators get a Wiz.

 

[quartercast]

And don't forget the Dingoo's amazing battery life

 

[DaveC]

The Wiz has decent battery life as well, I thought they were pretty close there.

 

[bagmouse7]

I think the Wiz is in better shape than the GP2x was at this point in its life and WAY better than the GP32 was.
The Wiz has the advantage of all of the GREAT coding that was done on the GP2x, which is being ported over very nicely to the Wiz.
I do not think that these GPH games that have been announced will make any difference in the success (or failure) of the Wiz.
There is one reason to buy the Wiz, emulation. I do not that anyone is going to buy it for these Wiz games. There is also one big advantage that the Wiz has over the A320, and that is the OLED screen. Even my wife will say "That screen is really cool on that little one" when she sees me playing with the Wiz. Now that z81 has released his Atari 800/5200 emulator I have everything I want on the Wiz (Atari Computer, MAME, Mega Drive, SNES, NES, SCUMM, NeoGeo, PC Engine), and these are all very high quality emulators.
I wish GPH would release a larger version of the Wiz with the exact same processor but with a larger (4 inches or more) OLED screen, a real D-pad and 4 nice buttons. In my opinion, this is what the GP2x F-300 should be. Given GPH's past record of doing strange things, who knows what will happen.
In any case I am really enjoying the Wiz and I think I will for a long time in the future.

 

[migo]

I don't see why people throw out 'touch screen' like it's not a big deal. As someone who really likes scummvm, I have ZERO issues paying extra for a touch screen. That's a huge selling point to me.

So many cell phones have touch screens though, especially smartphones which are becoming more popular. Even blackberries that don't have touchscreens are perfectly suited to ScummVM due to the trackball and keyboard (although admittedly it hasn't been ported to BB). In all likelihood people already have a phone, so getting a device that's capable of running the same type of games is a bit redundant. On the other hand people don't have phones with good physical controls, which the Dingoo A320 does have.

I don't see any DS as a viable emulation platform unless all you want to run is Coleco and Speccy. The big reason is that the DS only has 256 x 192 resolution wich is inadequate for anything such as Megadrive, NeoGeo, SNES, PC engine, MAME etc. Yes you can crop the screen or scale it down but those options make the games look like shit as you lose information. Why sacrifice native resolution capability if you don't have to?

That's a good point, I hadn't considered that.

Dingoo have three good things: radio, good as MP4 and cheap price.
If you want more homebrew of you like to see more powerful emulators get a Wiz.

And also good controls. There are plenty of emulators for phones and PDAs out there but they're not much good because the controls suck. The Wiz is definitely better than those, but compared to the A320 a lot of people don't like it.

There are a few things that totally kill a portable gaming system, unreadable screen, awkward controls and poor battery life. Any one of these is pretty much a death sentence. The Wiz is a potential on #1 depending on how you feel about tearing, and potential on #2 depending on how you feel about the face buttons. The A320 isn't so great in sunlight, which kind of sucks, but nobody has any complaints about the controls. Even if it doesn't handle emulators all that well, at least the ones it does handle will play well on the controls. It's a matter of personal preference here, but sometimes the outward design is more important than internal specs.

 

[danielliu88888]

?

i seem to hear more complaints about the dingoo's controls than the wiz's. people don't seem to mind the dpad-esque thing that much.

 

[crookedmouth]

I don't see any DS as a viable emulation platform unless all you want to run is Coleco and Speccy. The big reason is that the DS only has 256 x 192 resolution wich is inadequate for anything such as Megadrive, NeoGeo, SNES, PC engine, MAME etc. Yes you can crop the screen or scale it down but those options make the games look like shit as you lose information. Why sacrifice native resolution capability if you don't have to?

To be fair though you should mention NeoDS when you talk about emulation on the DS. Amazing NeoGeo emulator that works incredibly well even with scaling.

Also you should mention the brilliant "rewind" feature in NesDS, wish more emulators would have this feature.

Lameboy isn't a bad Gameboy emulator.

Though obviously the vice emulator for the Wiz is better, FrodoDS (especially with the modifications made by some users) has some areas where it works better then the Wiz C64 emulator. I'm thinking older RPGs or text adventures. The virtual keyboard is great.

Of course now I have the Wiz, I no longer really use the DS for emulation (except NeoDS). Mostly use it for ComicBookDS which is a fantastic CB reader.