Way down on the Gizmondo

by Peter Rojas { Oct 23rd 2005 at 4:58PM }

So the Gizmondo finally saw its official North American release yesterday. It hasn't exactly been a success in the UK, where it was introduced back in March, and if Associated Press writer Matt Slagle's review is any indication it's not going to tear it up over here, either. Slagle doesn't mince words, declaring that even though it specs out nicely (400MHz processor, 2.8-inch LCD, GPRS, and GPS), most of the Gizmondo's 14 launch titles are "uniformly terrible" and its much-touted multimedia features aren't so hot either ("playback stuttered throughout").

Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)

NG @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I can't believe the reviews the Gizmondo is getting - after all, it's got amazing titles like 'Mamma, Can I Mow The Lawn?" - http://gizmondo.allack.co.uk/Games/SD/Detail.php?ProductID=219&pageNum_Game=2&totalRows_Game=45&ZoneID=UK

Much better than Burnout Legends on the PSP, I tell ya!

brian @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

RE: #46 Max Velo:

Can anyone translate Swedish to English?

http://aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,718448,00.html

Rob @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I am not sure that they care about whether they sell 100 of these or a 100 million. They are only concerned with their luxury lifestyles: (These are Carl�s and Stefan�s)

Gulfstream G550 private jet
A 110 foot boat for carl
150 foot boat for Stefan
3 x Ferrari enzo�s yes THREE
Rolls Royce phantom
Maybach
Lamborghini murchliago
Aston Martin DB9
Bentley Continental GT
Mclaren Mercedes slr
Another Mercedes � I know it cost 250k
I think a Porsche carrera gt (this was involved in a �incident� not accident)
Hummer h1 and h2
Loadsa houses

These are what they have bought in the past 16 months, pretty sure all though gizmondo.

Max #46. I heard that as well about Stefan, I have met him a couple of times and he did mention some �dodgy� stuff if you know what I mean. I cant comment on Johan as I have never met him. Steve, is the new md though as carl and Stefan resigned last week. Steve is really good, really knows his stuff � probably the one of the best electrical engineers in the world and he�s probably the only person to takes gizmo forward � carl and Stefan worked 2 day weeks at best!

Oh almost forgot, they will announce losses of 2/3rds billion for 2005 soon.

Donnie @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Craig (28), I looked at the link, and the video is even poor by investors' standards. (Referring to the video) the GPS telling me where I could get a Sprite at a 7-Eleven around the corner... scary.

I think the Gizmondo is already dead even before it started; especially a debut game called "Momma, Can I Mow the Lawn?".

Lesbian Ham @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Lol, you guys think Im a PR guy from Gizmondo.

But nah, Im not, I just like to speak (type?) politely :-)

And yeah, im not sure about what the situation is with the head guys, if they're mafioso's or what, but the top 2 guys have now gone. Hopefully for the better.

Again, do they have playable demos at the kiosks? At the giz store in london there are.
Chicane, Richard Burns Rally, Colors, Johnny Whatever, Furious Phil and Milo and the rainbow nasties really are gonna be top-hitters.

Just check 'em out for yourselves at the giz website (giz.com, not TT.com ) and see how good they are

Feeble @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

hehehehe
ah, i broke my funny bone.

eric @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

After the trading day on october 20th tiger released ther SEC filing and their stock price went from 1040 to 8 something and ended up about 9. and here is an article from

gameindustry biz:

Tiger Telematics has released its delayed financial results in a report which shows giant losses for the company along with some interesting explanations as to where investors' money has gone.

According to the report, Tiger faced net losses of around USD 99 million in 2004, and an operating loss of USD 210 million over the first half of 2005. The company blamed these figures on "Development costs for the Gizmondo and non-cash expenses associated with shares of restricted common stock issued for services."

Tiger was able to secure more funding throughout the period, receiving USD 73.1m in investment capital during the period ending August 2005. An extra 24.7m shares of common stock were issued, earning the company more than USD 200m.

Costs have included a USD 5.9m contract Gizmondo Europe signed with Electronic Arts to develop FIFA and SSX games for the handheld, and the operating costs of the company's global network of offices.

In addition, Gizmondo Europe paid independent developer Games Factory Publishing USD 4 million for coming up with concepts for use with 19 Intellectual Properties including Cheerio's, the New Millennium Encyclopedia, Outlaw Golf, Weather Control and Typing Tutor. The latter IP is a particularly curious addition since the Gizmondo has no keyboard, keypad or touch screen.

Perhaps more intriguingly, Gizmondo Europe also paid independent developer Northern Lights USD 3.5 million to create the games Chicane and Colors. However, these games were in fact developed by two differerent studios - Warthog and Indie Studios, both of which are owned by Gizmondo Europe.

Northern Lights, coincidentally, is owned by Gizmondo Europe director Carl Freer together with Stefan Eriksson, executive officer for Gizmondo Europe.

The coincidences don't end there. During 2004-2005, Tiger hired a consultant who was paid more than USD 170,000 for "Marketing and public relations services, an introduction to the performer Sting, and time spent in connection with the Agaju gaming concept currently in development." The consultant's name? Anneli Freer, aka Mrs Carl Freer.

The report goes on to state that Tamela Sainsbury, the corporate secretary of Gizmondo Europe, was paid nearly USD 150,000 in base compensation during 2004, plus USD 83,000 in bonuses. She was also provided with a "luxury automobile" worth USD 70,000. Tamela Sainsbury lives with her partner, Steve Carroll, who incidentally is a director of the company.

It's clear from the report that Gizmondo executives have a taste for luxury cars - Carroll had a vehicle worth more than USD 230,000 bought for him by the company, while Carl Freer's "automobile allowance" for the year stood at just under USD 280,000. Stefan Eriksson's allowance was a more modest USD 104,000.

Freer, Sainsbury, Carroll and Eriksson each earn at least USD 1.5m a year and have been allocated more than 7.5m shares - worth more than USD 94m.

The report also reveals that some employees have been helping themselves to automobile perks: "In 2004, the company issued 800,000 shares valued at USD 1.8m to Joe Marten for services rendered to the company," it states.

Marten was head of investor relations at the time, but later "Left the employment of Gizmondo Europe after the company's board of directors learned that Mr. Marten had made an unauthorized purchase of a luxury automobile using Gizmondo Europe's funds."

The release of the report could signal troubled times for the company - investors are unlikely to be happy with the stranger revelations, or with the fact that no sales figures for the Gizmondo unit itself have been revealed.

Gizmondo, which recently settled lawsuits with the Jordan F1 racing team and landlords Christian and Timbers, continues to face legal action from an ever-growing list of plaintiffs. PR company Ogilvly claims it is owed USD 4.1m plus interest for services rendered during 2003 and 2004, while Handheld Games is suing over a development contract.

In addition, Tiger Telematics' financial report claims that MTV Networks Europe is "reserving its right to bring legal proceedings for payment of outstanding invoices" after Gizmondo failed to hand over an agreed USD 1.5m by the deadline of March 31, 2005.

Lawyers @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

The obvious question that no one seems to be asking, is this thing scratch resistant?

cold_dish @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Lesbian_Ham
yeah all those fake screenshots from PC demos...big hitters for sure.

Sepheroth @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

that johnny whatever game looks cool i wonder if its going to come out for PS2

jj @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

man, this thing looks like some cheap 20 dollar toy compared to the sleek and sexy PSP that oozes technology. i would not buy it at all. at $200, its a piece of junk compared to the PSP. even the new gba advance sp looks better than this crap

trev @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

hmmm whats this about sweedish mob guys, that cracks me up so much i really doubt there the same people with criminal records and why the helll would they keep the same name :P clearly a psp fan looking to deep into their imagination that has been suffocated by a bland bit of machinery.

giz is scrach resistant also takes falls onto contrete pretty well no noticable damage :)

spy spotter @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

this Lesbian Ham dude is from Gizmondo forum, where he uses id The_Solidshadow, and he's not a PR person, but sure is a big Gizmondo fan from UK

very sad, dude
why would anyone want to buy this ugly piece of junk ?

cold_dish @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

"giz is scrach resistant also takes falls onto contrete pretty well no noticable damage :)"

Smash resistant is a good thing since you'll be wanting to throw it against hard surfaces often.

brian @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

To Trev (or is it Trevsweb from gizmondoforums?)

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's the same guys. Those articles from the Swedish paper are blowing the lid off of the scam Carrender, Freer, Eriksson, et all have going with Tiger Telematics. They're more interested in milking/plundering the shareholders' money than actually succeeding with the Gizmondo, but now they are finally being shown for what they are.

And yes, they are that dumb. Mr. Freer has a history of trouble telling the truth http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/mike_langberg/12311424.htm

"Freer may also have done some polishing of his background. The company's annual report for 2003, filed late on April 1 of this year, includes a short biography saying that Freer ``was a co-founder of software company VXtreme that pioneered the highly successful video compression lab technique.''

VXtreme was started in Sunnyvale in 1995 and was indeed a bubble-era success story, selling itself to Microsoft in 1997.

`I do not know of him'

I contacted VXtreme founder Anoop Gupta, now a Microsoft executive, and asked him to tell me about Freer's role. Gupta replied, by e-mail: ``Carl Freer was not associated with VXtreme, and I do not know of him.''

I then asked CEO Carrender, via e-mail, for an explanation. Carrender, who is based at Tiger Telematics' small headquarters office in Jacksonville, Fla., initially said there was ``a minor typo'' and the company founded by Freer was actually named Weextreme.

I searched several databases and could find no records for a company by that name. When I asked Carrender for further details, he described Weextreme as an ``off-shore based Internet consulting company that ceased to operate in the late 1990s.'' That doesn't explain why the company was described as developing video compression software, which is what VXtreme did."

Trev, you're obviously a naive kid, but if you took the time to research the people behind Tiger Telematics and the Gizmondo instead of being blinded by your Gizmondo fanboyism, you'd see that these guys are as shady as they come.

brian @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

More on the Swedish newspaper expose:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=604316#post604316

"According to today's issue of Aftonbladet, biggest evening paper in Sweden, three swedes all belonging to the same gang that made themselves infamous in the early 1990s as the "Uppsala mobsters" are now to be found as high-ranking officers of company Gizmondo. Amongst their previous points on their CVs include trying to cheat the swedish postal giro system out of two and a half million US$.

For that and other stunts in the economic crimes sector, ex-con, now-director Stefan Eriksson (43) was sentenced to a sum of 10.5 years of jailtime. His salary yearly is now more than the embezzlement attempt would have pulled in.

Peter Ulf (42), got 8.5 years jailtime, he is also one of the executives of Gizmondo.

Johan Enander (46), the more physical person of the trio has multiple convictions under his belt, including assault, extorsion and 'violating the peace of the home' (meaning he likely bust into somebody else's place and threatened/roughed them up.) He got another jailtime stint in '03 for beating a woman, and was then immediately hired upon release to be the head of security at Gizmondo. Rather ironic, I'm sure most would agree. One can't help to wonder what "security problems" he deals with, and how he does it...

So what are the chances Gizmondo is little more than a front for more or less openly criminal people to help themselves to capital investment money (much like that Roberts guy and all his startups like Infinum Labs, etc)? Seems to me, that chance is fairly high. Gizmondo has burnt around $200 million just this past year, with white-collar criminals at the helm...

The paper naturally sought comments from the parties involved, but nobody was interested in talking about it (now that's a surprise!) and instead referred to the PR division. Yeah, they'll need some good PR to wash this away I'd say. An implosion of the company would seem fairly imminent, I think. Particulary as they have no real strategy, nor chance to compete in the market."

Agent X @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

#7 (Lesbian Ham), you said:

"And playback only stutters if the video isnt converted correctly."

That might be true...but the review on Yahoo! indicated that this was on a demo card that was supplied with the unit. Don't you think that if they (Tiger Telematics) are providing a demo, that they would at least want to use the optimal video settings so that playback is smooth and fluid? Are you trying to tell us that this is such a difficult process that even the makers of the system aren't capable of converting the video properly for their own demo?

C Williams @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Why go through all of the trouble to design a system, produce launch titles and a marketing campaign as a front? I don't doubt that there are shady people involved in this company (as there are in many companies) but usually when you want to hide your criminal activites behind a legitimate business you open a club or a restaurant or a chain of hotels. BTW, Tiger telematics is not the same Tiger that produced the game.com. (I had two of those and both stopped working after Y2K, which is weird because I don't remember them having a clock.)

Baxter @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

If I want to play Location Based Games, which I do, I will just play them on my cellphone like

http://www.undercover2.com

There are many other ideas for location based games that do not require such a poor device
http://www.technologybizdev.com/2005/08/18/first-us-location-based-games/

Jake @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

This device has got alot of potential. You shouldn't knock it before you've tried it. There's some pretty neat games coming out in the next 2-3 weeks. They're going to push that Nvidia chip hard, then you'll be able to see what it can do.
I got one & the Sat nav is spot on, it's really neat. You won't be able to buy anything at this price for all the things it's capable of doing.
Also it's much smaller when you see it, & feels well made & fits in your hand comfortably.
I've also got a PSP & a DS, but this is the one I use most.

Jake @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Yes there one more thing...there's been some really scathing brand biased reviews from the press about this device which are totally
unjust,inaccurate & untrue, that borders on propaganda.
So take a look at least at this:
http://www.bonusstage.com/art2985.html

cold_dish @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

That site you mentioned should have a disclaimer 'paid for by the makers of Gizmondo' Talk about propaganda! I guess 500 million bucks has to go somewhere because it certainly didn't go into the games or the hardware. No gadget head worth a damn would praise this thing. It's a jack of all trades master of none.

I hadn't heard about all the shady criminal stuff behind the company you don't hear that about Nintendo or Sony.

More importantly anyone got any good leads on getting an Xbox 360?

Stupidtalk @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Ok this is getting way too distorted way to fast.

1. Gizmondo is not $200 million in debt, it is how much they offered as shares for other vendors or companies to purchase. For example, Tiger Telematics offered Samsung 2 million shares valued at $25 million for the sipment of ARM9 processors and RAM for the upcoming production of units, that mony is not lost, Samsung get stock which has a 3-5 year restriction on it.

If you want to proove me other wise read and grab a quote which backs it up from their public filing: http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/doctrans/finSys_main.asp?formfilename=0001269678-05-000182&nad=

Here is my proof: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/050928/tgtl.pk8-k.html

2. The people who were involved with the mafia and spent corporate money for personal reasons, which included Carl Freer and Stephan were fired as of two weeks ago. Since then new management replace them and most of the money they spent was paid back.

Read: http://eol.edgar-online.com/edgar_conv_html/2005/10/20/0001269678-05-000205.html#FIS_CHANGE_IN_DIRECTORS_OR_PRINCIPAL_OFFICERS

Also, sure kiosks are cheap, but they are rolling out more of them across malls in the US. But currently the new management is actually trying to save money so they can release Colors, Chicane among others and then they will try to appeal to retailers.

This is not the lying snitch-like company most of you make it out to be. But rather a newcomer which most of you fanboys like to bash, and that is it.

Bobo @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Stupidtalk @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

If you want to see some good unbiased reviews from journalists which you can't speculate on go here.

http://wireless.ign.com/articles/660/660056p1.html

http://hardware.gamershell.com/articles/gizmonodo_review/

As for the journalist you linked, he said some quite stupid things.

One is the comment on the external speakers being worse than the headphones. Now thinkg to yourself, what do you expect from penny sized speakers?

He then went on about Smart-Adds being designed to not interfere with games. But then started ranting about how you can't skip them while you are playing a game. Can you see the hypocracy there?

Also,Smart-Adds only appear when you are going to or back to the main menu. They can also only appear 3 times a day and can run for 30 seconds at most.

If you want the true lowdown on Smart-Adds go here.

http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/mag.dyn/News/9223.html

Btw, how did you quote aricles. I can't even be able to paste a link without some kind of error?

Stuart McIntyre @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

We like it! We've been selling it for a few months now, as well as running one of our own, and it is a cool integrated device. For just �240 you get a full GPS SatNav, Games system, SMS and email device plus a load more besides. For the 18-24 age range, I can't see many devices better. Review here: http://uksatnavltd.com/product_reviews_info.php/products_id/72/reviews_id/14

It does have its flaws, but then so do most devices out there...

humberto @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I hate this product, I hate the people behind this, I hate the fanboys/girls at the boards, since they throw out the most outlandish rumors (MS buying TT, please.) I lurked and posted on the boards and got threatened with legal action if I didn't stop posting "slanderous lies about the company staff." (Linking articles about company exec histories, etc.)

Bottom line: never trust a device from a company that used to sell home improvement supplies.

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