iRiver's PSP killer (almost dead, sorry) has been kicking about since last fall. Dubbed the G10, the multimedia device has 3D graphics processing and a purdy 262k color screen. Korean electronics site AVING.net has pics up of a very slick working model. The portable drops in Korea this August. Bring on the Kart Rider!
More Here [Aving.net] Thanks, Torokun!













Comments
finally, something i could possibly buy. I wanted a portable system that could deliver Video, Music and Gaming and into one. Could have gotten the PSP or the Video IPOD but this is the real deal. 6GB of NAND Flash Memory and and a tight sharp screen. best of all, a battery longer than PSP's 2 hours. ^-^
the controls look horrible, and im not a big iRiver fan... Our store sells a ton of iRiver products, they are usually less then stellar quality.
That thing looks pretty slick. I love the slider design. And the 800x480 screen is to-die-for. But if anyone thinks there's no games for the PSP, my guess is there's going to be many less for this device even if it does come to the US.
"less than stellar quality"??? Bullcrap, Iriver products are excellent quality. Yes, the controls look a bit weak, but it is all in how they feel. I hope this makes it to the US and they keep it wide open to community game/app development. This looks awesome.
Are there going to actually be third party games for this thing?
At least they changed the individual directional (from the prototype) button to +shaped directional buttion on this version of the G10.
I highly doubt this thing would ever leave Korea. It's going to be launched through Korea Telecom to use their money pit WiBro wireless broadband service. The value-add is that people can play casual games anywhere, with Kart Rider serving as the killer app. Bonus for Nexon - they developed Kart Rider for PSP only to have some new brass come on board after the thing was 95% done only to can it. They clearly wouldn't put WiBro functionality and ship it overseas. That said, it's good to see them putting 6GB into a player. I had high hopes for the iRiver U10, which has an awesome form factor and really intuitive, kickass interface, but was crippled by a max of 1GB capacity on release. They could definitely use something with the same form factor and export it as a portable media player, but forget it as a game platform cos they won't get any support from non-Korean game devs. As a side note, the CEO of iRiver/Reigncom is a gamer. And it's not like he's one of these mid-30s Xbox dev team dudes. The guy's in his mid-50s and hardcore into MMOs. He had been a rank-and-file Samsung Electronics guy, which is a nice comfy high-status thing to be in Korea, and walked away from it because Samsung was too stodgy and not customer-focused enough for his tastes. When an avid iRiver user forum cropped up on the Internet, the CEO called for a lab to be built for them in Seoul so forum members can go to test out new products, talk about ideas for new stuff, etc. They're an official part of the design process - no new products are rolled out without being "approved" by the Internet forum guys and gals. Very cool management at this company. I hope they do well with this one.
The controls look horrid on that thing. Geez, if you have a problem with Sony products, you better steer clear of iRiver.
Well, to say the PSP is "almost dead" sounds like somekind of a wish, but a fact. I don't know how the sales is going in the USA, but in Europe and in Japan there is a good 2nd place. Can't beat the DS on sales, but you don't have to be 1st to survive. Otherwise the Xbox would have been already gone. Far away from the numbers that the PSP archives.
"They clearly wouldn't put WiBro functionality and ship it overseas." The specs list it as having regular WiFi as well, so there's no reason why they couldn't ship them worldwide. In fact, they could strip out the WiBro component to save on manufacturing costs for worldwide distribution. Regardless, making a device like this and limiting it to a tiny little Asian country sounds like pointedly trying to be the big fish in the small pond. Yes, it could be outrageously successful in its market...but it won't take long to saturate that market. More importantly, software developed for it will share that same limited market, and will have a hard time recovering development costs unless they limit the scope of their games. Then again, if they're going to be running this as some sort of subscription service, that could do a lot to defray dev costs and compensate for having such a limited market.
Purple Dave, Do you believe that being "a big fish in a small pond" is inherently a road to failure? You seem to dismiss it outright. Nexon makes upwards of US$3m per month in domestic revenue off of the freeware game Kart Rider. When you say that Korea is a "small pond" and "such a limited market", what are you basing this off of exactly - conjecture, or actual statistics on game-related spending by country? Could you share those? Is it always a good idea to release internationally? Or do you sometimes have to think about marketing costs, and the massive costs and human resources necessary to develop new markets?
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