The nD


I think im in the mood for beeing a troll today:


This is just crap, there won't be coming any good out of it:


- He maybe makes a system for 20 bucks, but how on earth will he get it at least as "powerfull" as a ds.


- Where should the software come from ? Sure their are a lot of people like foxblock and PokeParadox who just do because its fun. But you can't target a major audience with this


- He want's to target 6 year olds ? Where, in developing countries ? You'll have to live with the fact, that big players like nintendo have a huge cultural impact on children today. Even if they don't watch tv there is a lot of "social pressure". So if he doesn't come up with a game that everony in school is talking about - the impact on the group of 6-10 year old will be non existing.


This man has obviously no clue of what he is talking about.


If this magical thing relly materialises I will buy 50 of them, and will glue them to my bedrooms wall. So I will be reminded every day that even a person with no idea whatsoever can realize their dreams. After that I will start on making my own spaceship, which will also sell for 10000€ - I don't think it will cost more, they just sell it for millions to get their greedy little hands full of money.
 
I've been spending some time on their forum and IRC channel, and spent a good while talking to Bob himself about this. He has some really big marketing ideas, as he intends to eventually sell millions of these to children. He figures that children will find it to be more cool than Nintendo handhelds because of it's very low price and open nature (yes, I don't know what kid would find that cool either). He doesn't care what people on the internet think, because "just one ad shown during children's cartoons" will be vastly more impacting to his target audience. That's probably true, but I don't think he'll have anything to show that'll look more appealing than what established game companies are showing.


This about sums it up:


http://landofthebanned.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/bobs-game-the-nd-allows-you-to-fight-robots-using-comunitys/


Also, some more details have surfaced. He says his prototype hardware uses an SoC with a 400MHz ARM (probably ARM9). He's convinced that the long term per-unit cost will be $10, and told me that the $20 tag is merely the cost of the unit + Bob's Game, He says he has in-house titles and games from known development firms in the pipeline. When I challenged him on hyping a product too soon he countered that he's shown as much of nD as Nintendo has shown of their announced Wii U (something I don't agree with one bit). Following this point, he said that nD will be out before Wii U, with the first batch launching this year. I think we all know what tends to become of aggressive release schedules like that..


Success aside, whether or not this can exist will depend on whether or not he can convince investors to give him several million dollars to launch this.
 
thatgui said:
I think im in the mood for beeing a troll today:


This is just crap, there won't be coming any good out of it:


- He maybe makes a system for 20 bucks, but how on earth will he get it at least as "powerfull" as a ds.


- Where should the software come from ? Sure their are a lot of people like foxblock and PokeParadox who just do because its fun. But you can't target a major audience with this


- He want's to target 6 year olds ? Where, in developing countries ? You'll have to live with the fact, that big players like nintendo have a huge cultural impact on children today. Even if they don't watch tv there is a lot of "social pressure". So if he doesn't come up with a game that everony in school is talking about - the impact on the group of 6-10 year old will be non existing.


This man has obviously no clue of what he is talking about.


If this magical thing relly materialises I will buy 50 of them, and will glue them to my bedrooms wall. So I will be reminded every day that even a person with no idea whatsoever can realize their dreams. After that I will start on making my own spaceship, which will also sell for 10000€ - I don't think it will cost more, they just sell it for millions to get their greedy little hands full of money.
Click to expand...

The PS1 was 33 MhZ. Look at FFVIII.


I rest my case- he can do something interesting for really, really cheap. I just don't see it selling massively.
 
Jourdy288 said:
The PS1 was 33 MhZ. Look at FFVIII.
I rest my case- he can do something interesting for really, really cheap. I just don't see it selling massively.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't look at game systems by their CPUs. PS1 games are made possible by a dedicated triangle renderer, geometry transformation engine, wavetable style audio synth, and JPEG style image decoder. With just the CPU you'd get something closer to the 3D games on 32X, if not worse.


Then again, a good CPU can go pretty far when we're talking about custom software rather than emulation, where you can tailor things to only doing what the CPU can handle the quickest. I remember in 2003 having to choose between GBA and GP32; the GP32 initially impressed me until I learned it had no real video acceleration. So I chose the GBA, and barely played it. In retrospect I think I made the wrong choice, and would have been better off with the GP32.


I don't know what the nD will have in terms of acceleration, but it's probably not going to have that much acceleration. It may well come down to drawing pixels to a framebuffer and writing samples to an audio buffer. Then again, the super cheap SoC Bob linked (i.MX28) has enough 2D acceleration to composite 8 (!) layers with blending. If it can do that at a good framerate it'll help for 2D games, although you'll still have to draw sprites manually on their own layer.
 
The nD advertises itself as a 16 bit system, that gives me the impression that graphically, they weren't even aiming for 32X type graphics.
 
GiraffeeDreams said:
The nD advertises itself as a 16 bit system, that gives me the impression that graphically, they weren't even aiming for 32X type graphics.
Click to expand...

The whole 16-bit shtick is just that, advertising, of the nostalgia-whoring variety. To be accurate, Bob qualifies this by saying that it'll have a 16-bit color depth LCD, but I think we all know that's out of left field.


His dev board has a 400MHz ARM(9 probably) and he's looking at SoCs in similar ranges, maybe going down to 200-300. Although I think he won't be able to do all of this in $10, if he does go with a CPU of this level it'll result in games that can look much better than what's on 32X. From there it's up to developers to decide what kind of graphics they want.
 
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I agree the $10 price tag is enthusiastic, I admit the 16 bit thing tickled my nostalgia glands, secretly hoping for a new wave of MegaDrive type games.


Maybe he's just got low power = low cost in mind? I'm no whiz when it comes to these things, like I said though, I got the impression of 16 bit graphics without reading too much into it.
 
For once I'm in complete agreement with Exophase, this is absolute dreamland.


If you want to invite Bob in here I'll explain to him why it's dreamland.


I thought I'd just add some thoughts:


Battery - at least $3.50


LCD - at least $6


SoC - at least $8


Any kind of wifi/bt - at least $15


NAND - at least $3


SD slot? USB slot? - at least $3


Other needed components - at least $8


Multi layer PCB - $8


PCB population - at least $5-$10 (depending on complexity)


Case/buttons/etc - at least $4


Assembly/testing - at least $2


Global shipping of all those parts per unit - at least $3


Wow, it's already up to about $65, getting one company to do all the above for you might get


you $15 or so lower costs overall.


As you can see, in comparison the Dingoo is ASTONISHINGLY cheap (although it has no wifi) - I bet they only make $3-$5 per unit max.
 
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Exophase said:
He doesn't care what people on the internet think, because "just one ad shown during children's cartoons" will be vastly more impacting to his target audience. That's probably true, but I don't think he'll have anything to show that'll look more appealing than what established game companies are showing.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure that kids are generally more discerning than that.


Over here, the Watara SuperVision (marketed here by famed peripheral manufacturer, QuickShot) was advertised to kids via the same means as the Game Boy and Game Gear. It was featured and promoted for a time on an entire television programme, not just an advertisement, that was a staple of the kids' TV of the era (this was CITV's popular early 1990s video game news and current-affairs show, Bad Influence, for the record, both on-air and in publicity photographs, and it also had press coverage and print advertising). We all know how that turned out...


EDIT: I just did some reading about the SuperVision, and apparently it was offered as a prize on a US kids' show ("Legends of the Hidden Temple", apparently), too, as well as on The New Price Is Right there, as well.
 
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Exophase said:
In his defense he did list a pretty nice SoC that's $6.23: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX283&nodeId=018rH3ZrDRA24A&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab&fromSearch=false


Hardly cutting edge, but I'd much rather have that than say, an old MagicEyes MMSP2. Even has an integrated PMIC, but has no integrated audio - for that you have to go for one that's a few dollars more (so not worth it unless you're really trying to save space).
Click to expand...

It's still dreamland though. What's he saying now? You should keep us up to date on this if you're speaking to him. Bring him here so we can help him.
 
Craigix said:
It's still dreamland though. What's he saying now? You should keep us up to date on this if you're speaking to him. Bring him here so we can help him.
Click to expand...

He hasn't been on that IRC channel since, and only posts very sparingly on the forums he setup. The most recent thing I saw him post was in response to someone saying they wish there were new games like some old Genesis titles, to which responded "there will be now!"


On the IRC channel he insisted that he's so confident because he has "aces" and some "very smart people." On the other hand, he admitted he has no proper electrical or mechanical engineers/designers, but that he figured that the investors would just have him use theirs (yeah I don't know what he's thinking either). When I challenged anything he said I was "butthurt", then went on to question why I would be opposed to something that's so obviously beneficial to me. But he conceded that I must be trying to ensure its success by alerting him to possible problems (which I'm not, the whole thing doesn't interest me very much at all - aside from something to talk about)


$10 is crazy, and I have a feeling the very cheapest Chinese devices are, apart from being stock dumps, made with highly integrated custom ASICs and aren't meant to be programmable platforms. $20 is less crazy, but still pretty crazy. $40 seems to be at the lower end of feasibility.


However, I do hope for the sake of another project that wifi/BT modules aren't actually $15. Some digging for one suggests around $5. SD and USB should basically just the cost of the connectors and some passives, which are super cheap.. that is, if the SoC has builtin PHY, which a lot do these days. $40 seems somewhat realistic, I guess.
 
Exophase said:
Craigix said:
It's still dreamland though. What's he saying now? You should keep us up to date on this if you're speaking to him. Bring him here so we can help him.
Click to expand...

He hasn't been on that IRC channel since, and only posts very sparingly on the forums he setup. The most recent thing I saw him post was in response to someone saying they wish there were new games like some old Genesis titles, to which responded "there will be now!"


On the IRC channel he insisted that he's so confident because he has "aces" and some "very smart people." On the other hand, he admitted he has no proper electrical or mechanical engineers/designers, but that he figured that the investors would just have him use theirs (yeah I don't know what he's thinking either). When I challenged anything he said I was "butthurt", then went on to question why I would be opposed to something that's so obviously beneficial to me. But he conceded that I must be trying to ensure its success by alerting him to possible problems (which I'm not, the whole thing doesn't interest me very much at all - aside from something to talk about)


$10 is crazy, and I have a feeling the very cheapest Chinese devices are, apart from being stock dumps, made with highly integrated custom ASICs and aren't meant to be programmable platforms. $20 is less crazy, but still pretty crazy. $40 seems to be at the lower end of feasibility.


However, I do hope for the sake of another project that wifi/BT modules aren't actually $15. Some digging for one suggests around $5. SD and USB should basically just the cost of the connectors and some passives, which are super cheap.. that is, if the SoC has builtin PHY, which a lot do these days. $40 seems somewhat realistic, I guess.
Click to expand...

Well the cheapest decent BT (no wifi) module we could source was $9.50 @ 3000 pcs.


Yes you may find other ones which seem cheaper but they are garbage.
 
What Craig eloquently means by garbage is that they come with some basic firmware cranked out through the development tools and if you don't like it, tough titty said the kitty. :D
 
Craigix said:
Are you looking to program them?
Click to expand...

They have drivers and firmware available for Linux. For instance, OpenMoko Freerunner uses an older variation (AR6001), and that's a fully open design (hardware and software). It's also supported by Freescale for their $150 i.MX53 QSB eval board, which includes the drivers on the included Ubuntu distro. It's available in SDIO cards from third parties, so it's relatively easy to breadboard into a design that has an SDIO slot exposed. I'll let you know in the relatively near future how it works out.
 
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