Zeebo



"Gaming for the next billion."

Zeebo, the so-called "Brazilian console" (designed by TecToy but actually financed by Qualcomm), can be summarized by the phrase: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Sure, it's quite logical: take a cell phone chipset, get rid of the "phone" bits, and the result is a device that can play mobile games, bought and downloaded off the 3G network. Instant low-cost console with a huge library for the emerging markets!

But pretty much everything that could wrong did. The Brew platform proved severely inadequate for a console, requiring major changes to the operating system; in consequence, porting games became far more difficult than predicted. And as the market was shifting toward smartphones, most developers were not too keen to invest in an obscure variation of a rather outdated platform anyway. The chipset turned out less powerful than TecToy expected, so they still wanted to take their time to soup up the hardware and build a decent library, but Qualcomm got fed up, pushed for an early release, and refused to subsidize the components.

So ultimately the result was a machine with the power of a 5th gen console, for the price of a 6th gen console, at a time when 7th gen consoles were available. Not surprisingly, it was a total flop. After a pointless attempt to reposition it as an educational machine, it was finally discontinued, and it is no longer possible to download games for it; however, the Open Zeebo project has managed to unlock the console (soldering skills required).

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