Microsoft Game Studios to Port Games to Gizmondo

GamesIndustry.biz has the story that Microsoft Game Studios will be porting games to the Gizmondo handheld device. The "handheld console" is set to recieve some of the Microsoft greats, such as Age of Empires and Mechwarrior. From the article: "The system runs Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, which may explain in part the software giant's willingness to support it."

Tiger electronics

[stanmann]

Great, a handheld device from the masters of handheld electronics, running Windows CE, the ultimate in Operating systems

well at least it will be cheap coming from tiger.

Re:Tiger electronics

[El]

Windows CE, the ultimate in Operating systems Yes, but "Ultimate what?" is the question... as in "Ralph Nader is the ultimate in losing presidential candidates!"

Re:Tiger electronics

[n0wak]

It's a DIFFERENT Tiger Electronics, not to be confused with the makers of such wonderful devices as the Game.com.

Re:Tiger electronics

[gl4ss]

220 uk pounds, cheap or not.

though.. it's going to have a pretty decent looking port of carmageddon..

Warning!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not feed this device after midnight or spill water on it!!! This is a Mexican version of a creature that killed many people in the 80's in amusing humorous ways on Christmas Eve.

Re:Warning!!

[El]

Uh, Gizmo was the good gremlin... and "mondo" means "world" in Italian, not Spanish.

Nice specs, but!

[BrookHarty]

Mp3, WMA/WMF, Mpeg4, Bluetooth, GPS, Triband GSM/GPRS, 400mhz CPU, 64 Bit GFX Acceleration, 240x320 GFX, MMC/SD Card, Camera, Poly Ringtones.

But WTF, 4 buttons! This thing needs an attachable thumb board!

"recieve"???

[El]

receive [reference.com]

Now, about that spell check feature that needs to be added to slashdot...

Re:"recieve"???

[El]

Glad I dont code like that. I do code like that. I'm glad C/C++ compilers do compile time checking of my code! In Python, I have to wait until a line of code actually gets executed to find out I mispelled an attribute!

Re:"recieve"???

[KDR_11k]

Opera does that and I'm very sure there's a plugin for Firefox to do that as well as Opera uses GNU Aspell so the same dictionaries should be available to Firefox.

SpellBound

[unixbob]

SpellBound [sourceforge.net]

Re:"recieve"???

[edbarrett]

Now, about that spell check feature that needs to be added to slashdot...

That spell check feature should be on your own machine.

Use konqueror and [iah]spell. Set it up in the KDE control center under KDE Components->Spell Checker. Every textarea on every website spellchecked as you type.

no more conker on the gameboy?

[jx100]

What does this mean for their GameBoy work? IIRC, they (Rare, specifically) were still making games for the Gameboy, and stated that they were free to do so because they did not have a competing system. Now that they have one (sort of), will they keep releasing GBA games?

Re:no more conker on the gameboy?

[RomSteady]

Microsoft is merely porting existing games over to the Gizmondo. It's kind of like how Links 2001 was ported over to PocketPC.

The Gizmondo is not a Microsoft device, even though it's running a Microsoft OS. Now, if Microsoft purchases one of these handheld companies, then you might have something to worry about.

Re:no more conker on the gameboy?

[AltaMannen]

Is there really such a large leap between licensing a microsoft OS and being owned by them? Pocket PCs are pretty much the same thing between brands, give or take the odd button and clock frequency, so how much control is there of the Gizmondo that is out of microsofts little hands? If the thing catches on and has better performance than the PSP I wouldn't be surprised if it gets rebranded as the xbox portable.

Re:no more conker on the gameboy?

[RomSteady]

For Windows CE, there is a pretty large leap. We're not talking about the PocketPC, where there is a reference architecture and compatibility suites you have to pass to use the moniker. We're talking about a componentized version of Windows. PocketPC is a specifically designed subset of Windows CE.

For Windows CE, all Microsoft does is provide the software. The manufacturers are free to select any hardware/software combination that they want. There are about 3,000 seperate modules for Windows CE. If you aren't going to be using the .NET Compact Framework, for example, one click and it's gone from what gets pushed out. Not using a display? Click-gone. Not using a keyboard? Click-gone. Not using networking? Click-gone.

In addition, the latest licensing terms allow OEM's to make some pretty major modifications to the Windows CE software in order to make it a better fit for their products.

So in short, aside from labelling and licensing requirements, Microsoft has no control over Gizmondo. Microsoft probably chose the Gizmondo because of the comparative ease of porting from Win32 to WinCE.

Re:The GBA, NDS, N-Gage, and PSP are Toast Now!

[Ayaress]

It'll beat the N-Gage, but that isn't saying much. If the PSP does even worse than I expect, it might have a distant shot at pulling #2 in the US market like the Xbox did. But, I think the PSP will do at least Game Gear decent, leaving this thing (hell, I can't even remember its name already) high and dry.

Good luck Gizmondo ( Learn from Sega)

[zulux]

Microsoft supported Windows CE on the SEGA Dreamcast. Then they stabbed SEGA's back with the XBOX.

Microsoft support's Windows CE on the Gizmondo.... XBOX Portable must be just around the corner.

Hmm, Gizmondo == Xbox Portable

[blueZhift]

OMG! This Gizmondo _is_ an Xbox Portable, if not in name, at least in spirit. Here we have essentially a Pocket PC device running the Pocket PC OS (yeah yeah, Windows CE) built for gaming. Games were being written for Pocket PCs anyway, now developers can probably port many of those games to the Gizmondo with relative ease. This is an analogous situation to the N-Gage with respect to cell phone gaming, but without the side-talking!

Will it be successful? Hmm, now that Microsoft has entered the fray, that lends Gizmondo some serious street cred with the development community. And MS gets a chance to test the portable market place a bit without the nasty losses console makers have to take on hardware sales. Heck, they even get royalties since the Gizmondo uses a Windows OS. This should be interesting.

I can't believe you can't use it as a phone.

[drinkypoo]

It's got tri-band GSM and yet it's intended not to operate as a cellular telephone. Their site doesn't seem to explicitly say this in any way though they will tell you that it does GPRS and Tri-band GSM. Does this make sense to anyone? With a headset, especially of the bluetooth type, this thing would be an ideal single device to cart around if you wanted to be able to play games on it. The GPS is very nice to have as well. It would even be ideal for use in the car - but in order for it to be useful for all