I posted some of this in an N-Gage thread here, but with the release of new information on this system, it might be time to give it its own thread.
A while back, I mentioned a system called the Tapwave Helix, which is supposed to come out later this year. It has some very nice specifications--maybe not as good as Sony's PSP, but it looks like it should be pretty far ahead of the N-Gage, at least from a gaming perspective. They've also signed Activision, Midway, Atari, and Digital Eclipse for development on this system (hopefully Digital Eclipse will be doing some tasty arcade emulation :) ). Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 and Neverwinter Nights have already been named as launch titles.
Despite the very impressive specs, I had heard very little about the Helix in the press. A few magazines and Web sites have made brief mentions of it, but that's about all. Today, however, this article from CNN/Money has shed some more light on the Helix...or, should I say, the Zodiac.
Here's some of the new information that was revealed:
- The name of the system was changed from Helix to Zodiac.
- It will be available starting in September, but only through online purchases. It won't be available in brick-and-mortar stores until 2004.
- 15-20 games will be available at launch, including Neverwinter Nights, Spy Hunter, Tony Hawk and Doom II. The games will cost $29.95.
- The two SD card slots can support SDIO (for wireless cards and such).
- Dual rechargeable batteries that last up to 16 hours.
- There will be two versions of the system--a version with 32 MB of RAM for $299, and a version with 128 MB for $399.
How do you think the Zodiac will fare in the market? It might eventually get squashed by the arrival of the PSP (or it might not), and I doubt it would cause massive amounts of GBA owners to throw the GBA in the trash, but could this machine at least carve out a niche?
Also, how do you think Zodiac will do going up against N-Gage? The hardware seems a lot (and by that, I mean a lot) more powerful than N-Gage as a pure gaming system, at the same price. It doesn't have the cell phone capabilities, although with the Bluetooth networking, you could hook up to a Bluetooth cell phone anyway. Just about everything else seems superior. It's got a much larger and versatile screen (480x320 resolution with landscape orientation, or 320x480 with portrait orientation), built-in stereo speakers, dual card slots (hopefully more accessible than the slot on the N-Gage), and possibly more software off the bat (not counting Palm OS games, which it can also use).
I think the initial $299 price tag is going to be hard to swallow, particularly if you can't put your hands on a demo unit at a store and try it. I was hoping that it would be closer to the rumored $199, but it wasn't. Hopefully the price will drop before the Sony PSP comes out, at which point things will get mighty interesting in this market. At that point, it will almost certainly have at least the homebrew/emulation niche community behind it (like the Game Park GP32), but they'll need to make a big push into retail quickly if they want more than niche success.
By the way, I thought that Helix was a much cooler name than Zodiac. :)
What do you think?
