Last year, Panasonic surprised the world with the unveiling of a rather unique gaming handheld. Which was one way of putting it. You could also say it looked a little stupid. Something Panasonic now agrees with.
The "Jungle", as it was known, was planned to be a small handheld computer that ran on Linux, allowing people playing massively-multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft to play their games on the go. Or so went the plan. The Jungle was too small to do this properly, many big MMOs don't even run on Linux, and it looked as fat as a mobile phone from the 20th century.
Panasonic pulled the pin on the project earlier this year, announcing on Tuesday Jungle had been put to death "due to changes in the market and in our own strategic direction".
The Jungle's cancellation leaves Panasonic's last meaningful contribution to the video game industry the novel, if almost forgotten Panasonic "Q" GameCube/media player combo.
Panasonic says has dropped game development project [Reuters]