Gizmondo

Summary

The Gizmondo is a handheld console of the British company Tiger Telematics. Similar to the Nokia N-Gage and Sony’s PlayStation Portable, TT has a very multimedia concept with the handheld: the Gizmondo can be fed with SD cards and supports Bluetooth technology as well as various formats such as MPEG 4, MP3 and WAV.

Despite these impressive features at the time, however, the Gizmondo is not successful. Tiger brings the system to the market in spring 2005, but can only find meager 25,000 customers. Tiger goes bankrupt and the production of the Gizmondo ends already in February 2006.

The failure of the Gizmondo is interesting above all in that the specialist press believed the system to be a success before its release. Thanks to its multimedia possibilities, it is functionally superior to classic handhelds, such as the Game Boy Advance SP. Technically, the Gizmondo also has comparatively impressive numbers: the processor has a good 400 MHz, the memory is 128 MB and the graphics chip can represent up to one million polygons per second.

In terms of marketing, Tiger is quite unusual. In the UK, the company chooses the well-known Formula One driver Jenson Button as advertising medium — actually a thoughtful decision. However, the actual number of advertisements is very small. Oddly enough, Tiger places some of the few ads in gaming magazines in “Nintendo Power” magazine.

Initially, potent manufacturers and publishers support the Gizmondo. Among other things, spin-offs from well-known games like FIFA and SSX (Electronic Arts) appear. In addition, implementations of games such as Tomb Raider, Conflict: Desert Storm and Halo are planned.

However, the failure of the Gizmondo (and thus also a fast-starting lack of support of the developer studios) may be mainly due to the fact that Tiger offers it for sale officially only in very few places. In the UK, for example, it is only available in the London flagship store and from a few online shops. In the USA it is similar, since Tiger only delivers it at a few small outlets in the shopping malls popular there.

The sales figures are therefore far below Tiger’s expectations. In the course of the company’s bankruptcy, all ongoing game developments are logically discontinued and the ambitious Gizmondo project has failed.

Left: http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/gizmondo-von-tiger-telematics-gewinnt-preis-der-entwicklungsbranche-155136835.html. (details on development)

Games in the collection:

Toy Golf, http://www.gamefaqs.com/gizmondo/928530-toy-golf, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Golf