Never underestimate Chipzilla's ability to execute - Gilbert Ann Sullivan
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A gaming handheld with an Atom chip shows up
KOREAN HARDWARE VENDOR Ocosmos wants to take on the handheld gaming big boys with Windows 7 and an Intel 'Oaktrail' CPU.
Who could possibly take on the zillion-quid marketing muscle of Sony and Nintendo in the handheld gaming arena? Has Microsoft finally binned pokey portable media players to work on an Xbox portable? The Vole hasn't dived into the ring as the saviour of mobile gaming. Instead it is the mighty Ocosmos. Of course it is.
Shooting like a bolt out of the blue, Ocosmos's OCS1 handheld console running Window 7 and Chipzilla's Oaktrail CPU was the belle of the ball at the IDF show this year. The OCS1 that was shown off was a prototype only, so the specifications and features might change but nonetheless it wowed the crowd.
Intel's Atom processor sits behind a 4.8-inch touchscreen with a 1024x600 resolution. It has a dual-cam, HDMI-out, 802.11g WiFi and Intel's integrated GMA600 GPU.
Check out the shots on our sister site V3 and you'll see it was designed from the ground up to offer good gaming interaction. The OCS1 has two shoulder buttons and two D-pads with ananlogue joysticks, and is rumoured to support multi-user game profiles. There's also a version due out with a QWERTY slider and a 1.5GHz single-core CPU.
The road is littered with noble handheld failures, thanks to the likes of Nokias' Ngage and the ill-fated Gizmondo. We hope that the OCS1 hits the ground running, and it's encouragign that the market seems to be more forgiving of converged mobile gaming devices these days.
We reported earlier that Android 'Gingerbread' is showing serious potential as a mobile gaming platform and there are even rumours it will be used on Sony's Playstation phone.
Maybe the Ngage is way ahead of its time and misunderstood, while Saint Steve opened up the potential for converged mobile gaming on Iphones. µ
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I'll wait for ECS1 or even AGA1, OCS is just so 1990's ;)
... actually I've been hearing THAT bull for years now, even dough PC is the only real evolution of gaming compared to consoles that run progress into the ground by rehashing the same old bull. And doing that very poorly.
As for things working on consoles - not so much. They heat up and hang also, break down, don't load right, have bugs that are annoying to remedy especially in time, have idiotic marketing plans like paying for demos and have codes for stuff that's on the disc you paid for, awful controls for modern type games (fps, rts,...) because they were intended for platformers and such 30 years ago, have poor graphics because of the 10 y. old HW, just barely play media content, are not capable of doing anything else, and for last I can put that it dumbs your intelect down just for the sake that "it is easier".
Yeah, that is exactly what we all should aspire to, not the enrichment and enlargement of ideas and society as a whole... nice... hope you drown in your dull, one button machine with rehashed experiences :P
http://www.ocosmos.co.kr/eng/eng_01_01.html
"Origin Communication Synthesis Mordern Systems"
So, they even don't know how to write...
GMA600 GPU... woult it play... farmville?
Who knows if they create a custome DRM package that can be update like firmware it might do alright. The GPU is questionable though going with an Intel and not nvidia integrated. I'm surprised no one is doing a Tegra 2 and Andriod modified system before a WinTel...
Without a killer app, this device will be too expensive and not have any worthwhile software. The atom is too anemic to really push many polygons or be a well developed hardware platform.
Now if nintendo or sega or even microsoft decides to take a gamble on a small handheld, then maybe it might go somewhere. As it stands, without proper support it's doomed.
As for MISSINGXTENSION's comment about consoles dying? Psh. Not anytime soon. I've heard that bull for so many years now. it's actually PC gaming thats dying because the hardware keeps changing too often. Sure it looks better but the price/performance is rapidly fading out of pc gaming.
Not to mention, practicality. With a console, I KNOW that disc will work and i will get a reasonable framerate and i won't have to deal with graphics driver issues or weird configuration bullshit.
It just works.
I seriously doubt that anyone will actually use a pc/smartphone os. Sega learned a valuable lesson with the dreamcast/wince. It would actually make piracy much easier than it already is. The only reason that the consoles got any traction was because developer remember the cartridge days when pirating was costly affair. Once the PS3 gets a full crack, consoles will probably fall out of a favor again.