GCW Zero- A New Handheld and Portable Console

Their Kickstarter will fail. I would support it, but it is clear that it will fail so i might do it in their next attempt.

About the console itself, it seems like the OpenPandora of the Dingoo world. The guys behind it seem to have experience with Dingoo A320 and want to make an open version of it with focus on content developed for the platform instead of having it just as a portable emulator.

I say good luck to them, because if anything Dingoo could have been the indie handheld platform if the company behind it (i don't remember the name) tried a bit to promote to developers. As it was, the device was made, dumped to retail stores and the company simply abandoned it. Yet Dingo A320 is very cheap (you can find it with prices ranging from $50 to somewhere below $100 - i got mine for about 75 euros when it was new), with insane battery life, small portable form factor and an easy environment to program with (the hardware is simple and there is an SDL port for it). Installing games is as simple and plugging the supplied cable to USB and copying files from the PC to the device (which is seen as a USB drive).

Really, many of the indie games i see here and in other places could have been Dingoo games - all those (S)NES-like games would already have a fitting controller for it. Yet only few non-emulated games, all of them ports, are really available. Interestingly, a port of a remake of Commander Keen is one of the best games the device has (and even if the game wasn't made for use by a controller - or at least not primarily since i think the original supports gamepads - the controlling scheme feels at home with Dingoo's controls).

OUYA, GameStick, etc are all fine (and i supported GameStick since i like the idea), but i'd like to see an open handheld that isn't created, dumped and abandoned by the company but instead has some long term support. GP32, GP2X and the "sequels" were ok but all the company fragmentation hurt the platform. OpenPandora was an ambitious project, which failed because nobody could get the devices (i know they're still trying but unless they can mass produce, they're doomed).

GCW Zero... i hope they do it properly. The problems are twofold: first they need to be able to mass produce the devices (otherwise they'll hit the same wall as OpenPandora). And secondly - and most importantly - they need to understand and communicate what they're trying to do. And honestly i don't care about a portable emulator. I want new original indie games for a handheld that is a gaming device and not a phone. And i want it to be available to everyone, not just a handful of people.

They sound that they understand all the above. Hopefully their next Kickstarter will succeed (since there is no hope for this one unless some really popular person redirects his minions towards the project).