Panasonic "Jungle" Handheld Console

[wakka]

But yeah I do appreciate they're at least equally as important. Sound a bit enraged in my previous post lol.

On another note I don't think this will be the device to usher in widespread LTE. 3G would be okay for MMOs I think, but it depends obviously how sophisticated they are. As others have said they'd desperately need to get WoW, FFXI etc on board to make it work, rather than making their own like Nokia did.

[chipsgravy]

Colour me intrigued. I love Battlestar Gallactica which seems to be the MMO that is being launched with it. But as an MMO specific device? Not so sure. I will await pricing with interest. I'm thinking the actual console may be priced cheaply, and all games are subscription based.

Yea this is an interesting development.

[J0e Musashi]

I'm buying this on day one. Failure or not, it's the most interesting thing I've read about since 1994. If anything can distract me from the soulless megacorp gaming that is shoved in my face on a regular basis I'll throw my money at it.

It looks to have the greatest handheld shoulder buttons the world has ever seen too.

[MikeRox]

I think more needs to be known. It's clearly not being designed with the intent of competing with the 3DS or PSP/PSP2. They've identified the market they're after. I think how they implement things will be what decides how it works out.

It could be the social MMO stuff (Farmville etc.) they're actually looking at making it compatible with. In which case, traditional gamers aren't even the market for this device and our opinions are pretty much obsolete. I know quite a few people who love their facebooking etc. Farmville and the like that they're obsessed with however, don't really work too well on even smartphones afaik. So it could just be a device to run that.

If it was for stuff like PSO/Monster Hunter/WoW etc however, I'd be far more interested as I'd rather play em on something like that, than a PC.

[Ady]

Reminds me of N-Gage, or even worse, the Gizmondo.

Good news for the 3 people who'll get one though, I suppose.

[Lyris]

I vaguely remember Panasonic using the name Jungle in reference to an upcoming TV service over the past 12 months but I can't find any reference to it now so there could be other things going on with Panasonic in connection to this.

Lyris, you're the TV expert and I know you said you weren't expecting this but is the Jungle name something that sounds familiar to you?

Nope - I've never heard of "Jungle" from any of the Panasonic companies before.

Do we have any idea where this thing is/was developed? Any big company like Panasonic is actually a number of smaller interconnected ones. Was this thing developed in the US or Japan, for instance?

What I do find interesting is that the name "Panasonic" doesn't really appear alongside it in the official promotional material. Reminds me of the debate over whether to include "SEGA" on the Dreamcast or not...

[Decider-VT]

I like the design. It looks robust and ergonomic. I'd buy one if I could play Guild Wars on the move but I'd equally enjoy using it as a media player or for emulation, depending on the price. Obviously we'd need to know more about the specs but I'm wondering if this would be comparable to the Pandora in that regard.

[Strolls]

...
I vaguely remember Panasonic using the name Jungle in reference to an upcoming TV service over the past 12 months but I can't find any reference to it now so there could be other things going on with Panasonic in connection to this.

Its website talks about Machinima (a company?) and a TV show (click for video trailer). That seems like it could possibly be this lot, who bill themselves as "The Entertainment Network for the Gaming Generation" on their website. I don't really understand the tie-in, TBH, but the TV show promoting it might have been how / where you heard about it??

It could be the social MMO stuff (Farmville etc.) they're actually looking at making it compatible with. In which case, traditional gamers aren't even the market for this device and our opinions are pretty much obsolete. I know quite a few people who love their facebooking etc. Farmville and the like that they're obsessed with however, don't really work too well on even smartphones afaik. So it could just be a device to run that.

That's not how they're promoting it (so far) at all. Look at the Battleship Gallactica Online promotional video on the website, and the adult-themed cartoon show - that seems targeted much more at the older teenager and early 20s audience.

In the cartoon some gameplay footage from a fantasy MMO is shown - MMOs aren't really my thing, but it looks loosely similar to WoW or D&D Online to me. If it's an existing game, maybe someone can identify it? Or is it new IP? I'd guess the latter.

Do we have any idea where this thing is/was developed? Any big company like Panasonic is actually a number of smaller interconnected ones. Was this thing developed in the US or Japan, for instance?

The Gizmondo article (I don't know how reliable they are) says "it's being designed by Panasonic Cloud Entertainment, a tiny(ish) startup company uber-Japanese mega-corporation Panasonic's planted in Silicon Valley".

The thejungle.com domain is registered to a San Francisco (near Silicon Valley, I believe) address.

It kinda has the feel - and I admit this is on very scant evidence - of a small Silicon Valley start-up that got picked-up / bought-out / bailed-out by Panasonic. Like maybe these guys had designed this handheld to run online-anywhere MMOs, some department of Panasonic were involved in some way in building the hardware for them, and Panasonic picked them up when they ran out of money. Like it kinda looked good so Panasonic decided to pick the ball up ad run with it? That's a very speculative notion, but it seems like an odd place for Panasonic to locate an office if they were starting from the ground up, and Silicon Valley is full of these 4-guys-in-a-rented-office companies trying to build the next big thing.

[nem]

And it's being canned

[Neon Ignition]

What's the betting 3 years from now one appears on Ebay for a gazzillion pounds

[Lyris]

Wow. At the Panasonic Convention 2 weeks ago, people I spoke to from the company knew what Jungle was but didn't know much else about it - they were receiving info from the same sources as us.

Truly strange.

[Brad]

They'd better give me my pre-order deposit back.

[mekanor]

Are we at all surprised?