Say That Op Were Bought Out?

[SomeGuy99]

Try and suspend your disbelief for a second. Let's be hypothetical.

What if some larger company took a fancy to the Pandora and decided to buy out OpenPandora? How would you feel if Craig, ED and Michael decided to go for it? Would you support that, or would you want them to remain independent?

What scenario would make it ok? Some kind of partnership or sponsorship? If they kept the team intact?

I guess so long as the new company leaves in the ability to flash the firmware and boot from SD, this community would carry on, business as usual. We would still have our homebrew and Linux programs and our own app store.

If you think this sounds far fetched:

The Jaguar was developed by the members of Flare Technology, a company formed by Martin Brennan and John Mathieson. The team had stated that they could not only make a console superior to the Sega Mega Drive (also called the Sega Genesis) or the SNES, but they could also be cost-effective.[citation needed]
Impressed by their work on the Konix Multisystem, Atari persuaded them to close Flare and, with Atari providing the funding, to form a new company called Flare II. Flare II initially set to work designing two consoles for Atari Corp. One was a 32-bit architecture (codenamed "Panther"), and the other was a 64-bit system (codenamed "Jaguar"); however, work on the Jaguar design progressed faster than expected, so Atari Corp. canceled the Panther project to focus on the more promising Jaguar.

The Lynx system was originally developed by Epyx as the Handy Game. Planning and design of the console began in 1986 and completed in 1987.[1] Epyx first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 1989. Facing financial difficulties, Epyx sought out partners. Atari Corp. and Epyx eventually agreed that Atari Corp. would handle production and marketing, while Epyx would handle software development.
Atari Corp. changed the internal speaker and removed the thumb-stick on the control pad before releasing it as the Lynx, initially retailing in the US at US$179.95. Atari Corp. then showed the Lynx to the press at the Summer 1989 CES as the "Portable Color Entertainment System", which was changed to Lynx when actual consoles were distributed to resellers.[1]

Development on the Amiga in Amiga Corporation began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985.

 

[fiveseven]

Depends what company buys OP, and what they do with it.
While I couldn't really see it being marketed as a major games device, I can easily see it being marketed as a business device. Take out the gaming controls, possibly add a 3G connection. After that, there should be enough software in the repository to do the rest.

If that happened, I think things would continue as normal, but maybe with less emphasis on games. The openness would probably still be available (possibly in a similar manner to rooting an android device), and people would still take advantage of the powerful hardware.

The only downside I can see is that the price would inevitably rise.

 

[Monk]

Thinking about the Beagle Board and so on, I don't think buying out OpenPandora and then removing the gaming controls would make any sense. I mean - what would "they" be paying OpenPandora FOR? What can OpenPandora do that a larger company can't do as easily, and without the cost of a buyout, except the form factor including the nubs?

I don't see a buyout as likely, or a problem were it to happen. Stuff does, all the time. If the result was closed source I think a lot of the appeal would vanish, ditto with gaming controls gone - what you have as a business device would feel/be a lot more generic IMHO, and not worth the buying out.

 

[SomeGuy99]

An advantage to another company is cost saving re: research and development.

I don't think the Pandora is as niche as people think. All the people I talk to about it (and that's not just my geek friends. I tend to waffle to anyone) find it very appealing. It's the perfect toy, yet more serious and capable than other toys... just like the Amiga was.

 

[Aninhumer]

I think they would definitely make sure the anyone taking over actually understood what the project was about and why it was successful before they sold.
In the short term I don't think its possible for a buyer to screw much up anyway. They'd just keep making the hardware, potentially more efficiently due to having more experience and more money.
And if they ever do stop making what we want, the much richer original team could design a new product, and thanks to the OS being relatively standard Linux most stuff will work without porting.

 

[Zotty]

Doesn't matter who owns OP. What does matter to me is the openness. If they're bought and some idiot projectmanager decides to go down the Sony/Nintendo/etc road (less easy homebrew, non-standard memory, etc), I'm gone.

 

[SomeGuy99]

It would be quite cool if the Pandora was licensed, maybe re-branded by a larger company. This happened with Psion in America I believe, and the sort of thing Sega does all the time.

 

[Prometheus]

The difference being that Sega just puts their name to all sorts of shoddy tat.

 

[BackAssward]

Say my Aunt had a penis, then she'd be my uncle.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Say my Aunt had a penis, then she'd be my uncle.

It depends what gender they identified as.

 

[JayFoxRox]

Didn't Craig say that Microsoft already contacted? You can figure out what the answer was like tho..

 

[torpor]

I believe that the spirit of Open Pandora is entirely biased towards having a hell of a good time making nice computers to have fun with. If someone else bought that and wanted to make sure it kept happening, and we got a new generation hardware company formed that could make some interesting headway in keeping it real, so to speak, then I'd be all for it.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Didn't Craig say that Microsoft already contacted? You can figure out what the answer was like tho..

Weren't they basically saying: 'Oh yeah, see you're using Linux there. Nah... you don't wanna be doin' that! Nah... Windows CE. That's what you want mate. Don't bother with this Linux stuff, see now that's where you went wrong.'

Imagine Harry Enfield speaking it.

 

[verm71]

Didn't Craig say that Microsoft already contacted? You can figure out what the answer was like tho..

We can all guess what Craigix's response to Microsoft was. What we didn't expect was when Microsoft turned around and slapped the patent lawsuit against OpenPandora after they made millions of bucks, years after the release on the Pandora.

 

[headcrash]

hi,

a buyout would only make sense, when the new owner closes the system to sell his own products,

or when he wants to stop the distribution of the pandora project.

selling just hardware does not make enough profit for a big corporation. apple uses hardware only as a big dongle for its software.

for my point of view, the open pandora team guarantees the open platform, its distribution and maintance.

so I care who owns open pandora ltd. and I would not buy any 'better' but closed system.

greetings

 

[Namo]

Hm... I'm actually not against the idea, when it comes to certain things.

It seems to me like one of the biggest problems with the Pandora is the amount available - there's an admittedly short supply. If a company bought the namesake, they could mass-produce the Pandora for sale in stores.

Then, the pandora could be advertised as the end-all gaming device, pc, etc. Certainly its Keyboard, dual analog, 3D, and touch screen would capture the attention of several third-party and big name developers, like Sega for example. Of course, that runs the risk of keeping Homebrew out of the question by savory means; not many companies would run the risk of developing commercial software for a system that openly supports free homebrew. Which, as we all know, sadly, DOES lead to piracy.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Which, as we all know, sadly, DOES lead to piracy.

Piracy on the DS is a peice of cake. Even my ex bought a flashcard, and she isn't exactly technical.

And yet... Nintendo are making billions in profit each year.

Plus, Sony actively encouraged hombrew until recently:

Net Yaroze
Playstation 2 Linux
OtherOS

As we know, the Playstation range were very poorly supported by developers.


Also, while a pretty poor example, what about the N-Gage? That was completely open platform (Symbian) which had homebrew available and also commercial games. There were emulators and Doom ports and such, and yet also proper titles from Capcom, Sega etc.

From Wikipedia, developers for the Ngage included:
Sega, Activision, Hudson, Capcom, EA, THQ, Taito.

Publishers:
Sega, Atari, Ubisoft, Activision, Capcom, Codemasters, Bethesda, EA, THQ, Taito.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N-Gage_games

Count of Symbian based emulators (From Zophar.net):

Amstrad - CPC (1)
Arcade - MAME (3)
Chip-8 (1)
Coleco - ColecoVision (1)
Commodore - 64 (2)
Commodore - Amiga (1)
Microsoft - DOS/Windows OS (1)
Microsoft - MSX (1)
Nintendo - GameBoy (6)
Nintendo - GameBoy Advance (3)
Nintendo - NES (4)
Nintendo - SNES (2)
Scumm VM (1)
Sega - Genesis / Sega CD / 32X (1)
Sinclair - ZX / Spectrum / QL Series (1)
SNK - Neo Geo Pocket (1)

Ngage homebrew (from dcemu.co.uk):

Homebrew for Nokia N-Gage/Symbian 60
BeatEd
Best Screen Snap
cCam and cClock
Cheez
Chords
Creepy Invadors
Doom
DukeNukem 3D
EmTube- Youtube for s60
ereader
Final Battle
Frozen Bubble
Frogger
Gea VS CoDOS
Kwoki
Liero
Lightnotepad
Linuggz
MobileGTD
Mobile weather
PhoNetInfo
Python for S60
Rats & Spears
Rick Dangerous
The Journey
Free Mines
Miniblaster
mIRGGI
Mobile Help Genius
OggPlay
Pynetmony
Quake
Quake2
Quodrings
Scummvm
SDL
SIC FTP client
Shadow Warrior
ShakeSMS
Snowed In Deep Freeze
Spear of Destiny
Stopcall
Wolfenstein3D
Y-Alarms
YBrowser
Youtube Player

 

[Aninhumer]

Of course, that runs the risk of keeping Homebrew out of the question by savory means; not many companies would run the risk of developing commercial software for a system that openly supports free homebrew. Which, as we all know, sadly, DOES lead to piracy.

They're possibly less worried about people pirating their own games, and more worried about having to compete with a massive library of retro games.

 

[lulzfish]

I wouldn't care as long as it stayed the same and wasn't delayed.
It would be annoying if they started to put their own little search toolbars and shit on the OS, or if they removed the keyboard or some bullshit.

 

[God Ginrai]

I would normally be against another company purchasing OpenPandora, unless they showed similar values towards openness that we are currently seeing in OpenPandora. The only one of the big 4 that I would possibly be ok with buying OpenPandora would be Sega, and even then, I would hope that if they were doing that that it was part of a big plan to fix what they fucked up and start moving back into the hardware business.

-God Ginrai