Let's Send The Panda Back To The Forest

[Pyxis Nyx]

We early supporters of the Pandora will have a lot of work to do as we clean the trollish slime from our new toy.

Most people just aren't that interested and will not see the Pandora's advantages oveer the latest from Nintendo for a long time. I believe a unified front is needed as we make a space for the Pandora in the electronics hobby world.

I suggest we stick to Pandora images and the themes of her story for decorative and promotional purposes, at least for the for the first year after launch.

Afer that, I plan to use Bill Clinton caricatures for everything Pandora-related!

 

[Jourdy288]

So how exactly do we share info with people other than photos? I, for one, think that the Pandora can be a force for moving people away from closed-source technology, but it needs to be marketed right.
I think that it'll be a really big success and we'll pwn the Sontendo PS. But only if we can prove it's better, and show that "Y00 can plai Hal0 wit' itSzz lolololol" (By this, I mean that we'll have a plethora of good games that'll attract people if they see that everybody is playing, and it's not actually... junk!)

But if there's one thing we must do, it's wait for the Pandora to be released. Otherwise...
And I commend you for trying to support the Pandora, keep at it, but I warn you that troll's will be coming to this thread very soon.

 

[JayFoxRox]

You don't have to satisfy everybody.
Pandora is not for everybody.

 

[mali]

I think we should just enjoy our new toy and smile

 

[Jourdy288]

Why not share our toys

 

[mali]

If those people see us smiling, they'll want one too

 

[second exodous]

I think the failure in the GP32, GP2X, and Wiz is they were only for games but cost a pretty penny. The Pandora is a little expensive but it does so much more. Where GPH systems had shiny emulators we'll have that too and web browsing, wifi, clandars, text documents, a keyboard, long battery life, ect.

Basically everything that isn't games will help pull people to it. The age demographic never worked for the GPH handhelds either, it seemed it was marketed at kids but it cost too much and they were a little too complicated to use. I still remember threads about the GP2X where people were saying 'My mom won't let me get one because they are . . .' The Pandora looks like it's marketed at older 'kids' because it doesn't focus on games alone. I never felt I got my moneys worth with the GP2X, all it did was games and it never had standards of how those games worked or were installed.

Anyway, when showing it to someone I'm sure the desktop GUI, web browser, and general computing will add a lot more incentive to them to get it than just playing games.

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

I don't think either the GP32 or GP2X were failures. They, and the Wiz, are cheap which negates your first sentence.

After that I stopped reading.

 

[relapse808]

I see the pandora in my eyes as a spiritual successor to my Zaurus C-3000. It has what the zaurus was missing and thats the gaming controls. This to me is a niche device. Every person who enjoys the Nintendo DS isnt going to enjoy this. I can do a lot more and is basically a linux computer in your pcoket. Why do people game on xbox360 instead of PC? Because its easier to use and its cheaper. Thats the same thing here when comparing the DS crowd to the pandora crowd.

 

[mali]

relapse808, I agree. The audience is much broader and the console is especially interesting for devs and hackers. Not comparable to anything.

 

[renwils]

I don't think either the GP32 or GP2X were failures. They, and the Wiz, are cheap which negates your first sentence.

After that I stopped reading.

I don't think he implied that they were failures, just that they failed to offer features that would bring a wider appeal.

 

[second exodous]

I don't think either the GP32 or GP2X were failures. They, and the Wiz, are cheap which negates your first sentence.

After that I stopped reading.

I don't think he implied that they were failures, just that they failed to offer features that would bring a wider appeal.

That's what I was saying, I really liked my GP2X, much more than my GBA. It is just when I showed it to people they just said 'why would you pay so much for something that only kinda plays games?' The failure I'm talking about is just not a very wide audience.

Some of the lack of commercial games will be masked by the non-game stuff it can do. If it has that and commercial games it will probably huge.

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

I'm not sure you're right Lunatic but you may be

I think the failure in the GP32, GP2X, and Wiz is they were only for games but cost a pretty penny

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

I don't think either the GP32 or GP2X were failures. They, and the Wiz, are cheap which negates your first sentence.

After that I stopped reading.

I don't think he implied that they were failures, just that they failed to offer features that would bring a wider appeal.

That's what I was saying, I really liked my GP2X, much more than my GBA. It is just when I showed it to people they just said 'why would you pay so much for something that only kinda plays games?' The failure I'm talking about is just not a very wide audience.

Some of the lack of commercial games will be masked by the non-game stuff it can do. If it has that and commercial games it will probably huge.

Ah, lack of commercial games = failure. I see.

For me it was their strongest point.

 

[second exodous]

I don't think either the GP32 or GP2X were failures. They, and the Wiz, are cheap which negates your first sentence.

After that I stopped reading.

I don't think he implied that they were failures, just that they failed to offer features that would bring a wider appeal.

That's what I was saying, I really liked my GP2X, much more than my GBA. It is just when I showed it to people they just said 'why would you pay so much for something that only kinda plays games?' The failure I'm talking about is just not a very wide audience.

Some of the lack of commercial games will be masked by the non-game stuff it can do. If it has that and commercial games it will probably huge.

Ah, lack of commercial games = failure. I see.

For me it was their strongest point.

Man, I am being really bad today. I didn't mean that either, the GP2X not having commercial games didn't make it a failure for me, but it added to the list of reasons why it didn't have a wider audience. I don't think the Pandora will need commercial games, for those who won't buy a system because it doesn't have commercial games might see the general computing side of the Pandora and might get it for that.

 

[mindlord]

The catch is, that if by some miracle some major game house decides that they are going to give the Pandora a go. The explosion of commercial quality games might just thrust it into "general gaming device" category. I mean surely Apple had no idea that the iphone would attract so much attention on the gaming angle, but there is shit tons of commercial games popping up all over the place for it.

Could you imagine what kind of response the general public would have if, say, Sega, Activision, or EA come out and said, "Well folks, we like the Pandora, and we are going to port some of our catalog to it." It would be interesting to say the least. We all know that competition drives the game industry, and if one of the major players jumps on-board, who knows who else will follow.

Time will tell if the Pandora is just attractive enough to build up a large user base and become viable to a commercial game house. 4000 units in the global marketplace is like spitting on the sun. I think if they sell fifty thousand quickly, and people are still ordering: interest might just be high enough that the Pandora could turn the corner and go!

How many units would have to go out before someone's attention would get piqued? Can anyone think of a piece of tech or game console that despite limited availability still got the attention of a big software house? I mean the Palm III couldn't have sold that many units as expensive as it was when it first came out, and Maxis jumped into bed with it.

How many of us really think that the Pandora could generate the big sales numbers? I think that once word of mouth really starts to spread around, a couple ten thousand units could go. I think the GP2X sold 30,000, right? But, that was over the course of several years. I would hope that the Pandora could do better than that. If sales go really well, I don't think it would be a bad idea to do a real honest to goodness advertising campaign. If the Pandora sold units in big volumes, we'd all be pretty happy for OpenPandora Ltd. regardless.

 

[Dunny]

It's unlikely to succeed in enormous numbers precisely because there is no large corporate backing - read that as "commercial games" if you will.

It's a handheld computer, but these days the average joe sees the handheld title and thinks "games". Without commercial games, people will plump for Sony or Nintendo because that's what they know. Another problem is that Nintendo and Sony already have contracts with large game companies from their big consoles, so encouraging them to make games for the handheld was easy enough; a library of top-name games was available from the start, if not top-quality - but that doesn't matter when the average joe only reads the words "EA" before making a purchase.

Advance units will have been sent to developers a long time before the release to the general public. Coupled with a few million units available to buy at launch, and you have a very strong chance of a good ROI.

The Pandora has none of that.

Then consider if you will the fact that the platform is open. Anyone can code for it and those that do tend to open-source their code. Big companies don't like that - they don't care that they can release binaries only for the Pandora and reserve the source; they see the open-source tag and refrain from touching it with someone else's bargepole. It's sad but true.

OpenPandora is not a big, looming anonymously led company, and that hurts too. When new tech comes out, people will be clamouring for a Pandora II, and expect to get one - and sales of the Pandora will tail off. That doesn't happen with Sony or Nintendo, because there's no-one to badger for it. Nobody complains that they're not using the latest tech (apart from a few geeks that complain about UMD - the average joe doesn't complain) - you get what you're given and the vast majority are happy with that. All Sony or Nintendo have to do is re-iterate the same hardware, or make small upgrades but totally fail to exploit them in favour of back-compatibility, and people go out and buy the new one in droves. That also won't happen with the Pandora.

I expect mildly more success than the GP2X and a lot more than the Wiz. But nothing like the PSP or DSlite/DSi. And until they get that success, commercial games aside from small indie companies are pretty much not gonna happen.

D.

 

[Polossatik]

Maybe silly Q,
but why would pandora be trying to be a next nintendo DS (or PSP or...) ?
It has it's "niche" and , while I do hope they sell more then 4000, I don't really see the actual need to flog like 100.000 of them.
As long as pandora is profitable and makes pandora ltd some (good) $/£/€ then that's fine.

no?

 

[mindlord]

I never expect to see millions of units sold. Nor do I expect the Pandora to be a direct competitor with Nintendo or Sony. And my statements were mostly hypothetical and "what if" scenarios. If OP ltd wanted to nudge the Pandora towards mainstream acceptance, what do people think that magical sales threshold might be before the big guys in suits sit up and take notice, and what kind of response that might illicit from the general public should such a thing happen. How do you guys think the general public might react if suddenly a noticable perchentage of people were carrying a Pandora instead of an iThingy, PSP or DS? Sheer speculation.

I don't think that Opensource software carries the same stigma as it did 10 years ago. Some companies, like ID and Bioware don't seem to have a problem with Linux in general. While certainly not EA, it would be neat to see NWN and Idtech4 games ported by their host companies.

 

[MDave]

Some people prefer developing games over playing them, myself included. That's a potential lot of people, not just bedroom coders but individuals involved in the games industry that want total control over their game / application whatever