The GCW-Zero: A new open source handheld console (Kickstarter)
Update: I am getting lots of feedback telling me I am judging that device too fast, and that my expectations are not on par with the goals of the project. Since I wouldn’t like my own projects to be judged by people who have never even tried them once, I took the plunge and ended up backing the project. I will be trying the device and give it a fair review when I receive it.
tojoleon, a member of our /talk community, pointed me to this new Kickstarter project which aims at creating a new open source handheld console, mostly dedicated at homebrews and emulators, the GCW Zero.
In essence, the GCW-Zero is the spiritual successor of consoles such as the Dingoo or the Open Pandora. The Open Pandora was a nice attempt at an open source system that, when it was announced, would have blown the PSP out of the water in terms of performance. But Kickstarter didn’t exist at the time, and the Open Pandora had too small an amount shipped to ever become relevant.
With the success of the Ouya kickstarter, and the lack of decent competition for a dedicated open source handheld gaming device (some Chinese Android devices are trying to fill the void, but generally fail, see my review of the DroidX360 here), I am sure there is a market for a dedicated open source gaming device. Is the GCW-Zero up to the task?
On the paper, the GCW-Zero is a mix of good and bad choices in my opinion, and I am not sure if the device will find its audience (that being said, the people behind it have way more experience than me in that market, so they probably know better than me what their audience is looking for).
On the side of the good stuff, a real analog nub, accelerometer (g-sensor), Wifi support, usb connection, and decent specs for the CPU and GPU (1GHz MIPS process, OpenGLES2.0 compatible GPU). And of course, 100% open source, and most emulators are already supported.
Sadly I am finding a few questionable choices that make me not back this project up at the moment. All of these are probably personal, I’m sure the devs of this project had to make some choices to reach a good quality/price ratio, and I’ll let everyone make their own choice and debate in the comments below, but:
- 256MB of Ram is not enough if the device attempts at becoming more than an “oldies emulator” system. 256MB of ram is enough on a system like the PS3, where devs have all the time in the world to optimize their game in a limited environment. Not in an open source system where people will first try to quickly port existing games and applications, in a world where even the cheapest Android devices today have 1GB of Ram. This threatens the multimedia possibilities of the GCW-Zero.
- I question the HDMI output on a device that might not have enough juice to play High Definition TV because of Ram or GPU limitations. As a gaming device, portable device + HDMI cable does not make much sense, unless you plug a wireless controller on the device… but then what’s the point of the screen and the integrated gamepad…. I would gladly exchange the HDMI support for anything else dedicated to gaming (see below)
- Only one analog nub? Why stop there? The lack of a second analog nub has been the main criticism against all handheld consoles before the Vita. A Kickstarter project has the opportunity to fix this. This shows again that the GCW-Zero is in only for old games and emulators, and will not try to fix broken implementations of some FPS games.
- A 320×240 4:3 screen, in 2013, is not enough. This one is probably the worst flaw of the design to me. The Vita has taught me that a OLED screen and a high resolution does improve the gaming experience even on older games. 320×240 means that the gaming experience will be limited, and forget about multimedia support.
Update: The GCW-Zero team addressed this question in their FAQ, I am copy/pasting their answer here:
A bigger screen on the GCW Zero = less battery life / more work on the CPU / less fps in emulation / blurry, rescaled graphics and a higher manufacturing cost…
The reason behind choosing a 320×240 display isn’t just monetary. Of course, a larger display would have raised the final price of the device, but it also has many other cons for a device aimed at retro gaming. First of all, a higher resolution is not needed because most retro games we support run at 320×240 at most. A larger screen would require everything to be rescaled, so the CPU would have an extra load of work and this would result in worse gaming performance and less battery life.
- The pledge levels are not exciting enough in my opinion. They are probably realistic, but projects that I have backed in the past had promises that gave incredible incentive to being a backer. I know not all projects can afford to do that, but at a price close to that of a 3DS in order to get the device, this is a bit disappointing.
- One last concern I have is the quality of the gamepad itself. My experience with a few independent products has proven to me that companies like Sony invest a lost in R&D to make the controls smooth and resistant. Hopefully the direct involvement of qbertaddict (whom I know has tested the droid X360 and met the same issues as me) in this project will help prevent physical issues with the controls.
Don’t get me wrong, the GCW-Zero is a great project and I hope they succeed, if only to see a “version 2” that will meet my personal expectations. My points above are just to explain why I personally won’t pledge for this project. To put it another way, I was much more excited by the Open Pandora, which was extremely expensive, but also had specs that (at the time) would have killed any other handheld console in the world. Kickstarter today makes a project like the Open Pandora actually possible on a large scale. But the GCW-Zero just feels like it is lacking ambition to me (and again, this is from a pure “end user” approach. I am not saying that setting up a project with a handful of people, to ship thousands of units worldwide is “unambitious)
In the end, how much difference will there be between the GCW-Zero and a hacked PSP? Are people willing to exchange the nice PSP screen for the boost in Ram and CPU of the GCW-Zero? The project still has 15 days to convince backers.
What are your thoughts?
Source and full details: Kickstarter
Also I think that gyro (?) functionality is redundant (for example Descent would play much better with dual analogs and I can’t think about any other old game that would use it).
With 640×480 resolution this hardware would be capable of rendering hi-res versions of old open source PC games, as well as a few PSX games that uses hi-res mode like Colony Wars, Tobal, Ridge Racer R4, Bloody Roar II, Gran Turismo 2 (only menus and car rendering in garage is 640×480 iirc), Crash Bandicoot (512×240), Wipeout 3 (512×240) and other games with weird resolutions like Tekken 3 (direct feed from emulator – 320×480). This is a HUGE bummer in my opinion. I can’t understand how the console that have been designed with a help of gaming community could take this direction. Argument that most of older games run at 240p or below is not the best one because 480p would allow for perfectly clean 2:1 upscaling.
Spec wise as long as the console is fully capable of running Amiga and PSX emulators without frameskip and with perfect sound than it’s good enough.
Not sure how much simple resistive touch screen costs compared to normal one, but if it’s less than 10$ than I think it would be worth to implement it in order to gain scummvm support (resistive technology that require stylus would make scummvm far better on this device than on any capacity based system on the market). It would be also useful for old computers emulation (Atari, C64 etc.).
As for the price, I would be ready to pay 160$+ if the system would have above mentioned VGA touch screen and dual analogs. In it’s current form it’s not worth more than a used PSP imo. Maybe GCW-One will fix these issues…
Why don’t people talk about the Archos Gamepad? It is an awesome android device that has a d pad, two analog sticks etc. All old school emulation (including up to N64) works great. The specs on it blow this away and it is available in Europe right now for 150 Euro and is planned for the US for around 150 bucks…It also is an android device so you have access to android market and all of its games, plus hdmi, video playback, websurfing, touchscreen, etc.
Sorry to burst your bubble slightly, Erik, but there have been several reports regarding the Archos Gamepad’s d-pad (especially on “Obscure Handhelds”) as being fake. It doesn’t have the traditional feel of how a d-pad functions on controllers/gamepads and handhelds; it’s basically buttons, like the square/triangle/x/circle on Playstation pads or Y/X/B/A.
However, the analog nubs are said to be true analog, so I guess it depends on what you want out of the Archos Gamepad.
Here is a demo that will show the value of the GCW Zero over a psp…
An excellent comparison, Anyone still think the PSP is just as good for emulators?
The Android port of SNES9X runs FX chip games pretty well, but it still gets beaten by the GCW Zero…. so specs obviously aren’t everything, when a little 1ghz single core device can beat a 1.6ghz quad core device, lol
You guys keep talking specs specs specs. But specs only tell one side of the story look at what it actually does and compare you will see it outperforms the psp in most cases.
http://www.youtube.com/user/qbertaddict1?feature=watch
Here is a video one of the developers recorded that compares a modded PSP and GCW Zero in terms of SNES emulation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZfwtGSZA1I
My apologies. I did not notice it was previously posted by Warbarn.
Actually the Open Pandora is still around and arguably just now reaching its prime . I have one I bought 4,5 months ago new . I know what I’m talking about .
wololo, I think this device deserves a second look….. if you’ve seen the comparison videos, there’s no way that you can’t give it a second look…. the specs may look meager on paper, but watch the videos, the performance speaks for itself!
This is a humble little non boastful device, it doesn’t bring a bunch of fancy gee-gaws and bells and whistles, or “killer features” as it were, nothing really that screams “buy me! buy me NOW!!!”, but when it comes up to bat, it just quietly steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park….. how can you not love that?
Maybe there’s not enough exciting about it for you to consider buying….. I’m with you on that, but it at least deserves a fair shake, and people deserve to see all of the info before you just dismiss this as “not worth it”
I do not feel like I completely dismissed it. I called out a few design choices that I think are a mistake in this day and age. People who support this project have contacted me a lot since I wrote this article, but I still stand behind what I said. There are choices in the components that do not make sense to today’s standards. I’d be interested to see how many people need the HDMI output, when they don’t need more than a 320×240 screen.
I’d be interested to see who decided to call this a device “by gamers for gamers”, when most gamers I know have been criticizing the lack of a second nub on all handhelds for the past 7 years, and when this device will clearly NOT run any indie game created recently. This is not about “commercial games VS homebrew” here, it’s about “let’s run emulators and not care about the indie scene at all, then pretend we are the right choice for people who value homebrews and indie games” <-- I am over-exagerating this here to make my point, I am not saying anybody behind the GCW-Zero project ever said or thought something like this. There is a world in indie gaming beyond emulators from the nineties, and this project ignores it, which is a choice, but which is what I called a "lack of ambition" in my article. I also think that for pure branding reasons, 512MB or 1GB of Ram would have been better. It does not matter that this Ram is used or not, what matters is that the current specs of the device will get many people to simply dismiss it. At the price of Ram these days, I'm sure it wouldn't have made a difference. Again, I am sure it's a nice little machine, I just don't see reasons for me to back it, and hopefully people will understand that I speak only for myself.
I disagree that they are leaving indie developers out, I think you far underestimate the specs of this machine, it does have a 3D OpenGL capable GPU, it can do games at the very least on par with a PSP if someone wants to develop it, even the dingoo was able to pull that rabbit out of its hat with a few simple 3D games rendered entirely in software… as to lack of the second analog nub, yeah another would be nice, but I don’t see it as a neccessity, I’ve played plenty of 3D games where the face buttons were mapped for movement and the shoulder buttons mapped to shoot or other actions….. it may not be ideal, but it does work…. so yeah, there will have to be some thought put into control layout, but I see no reason why any indie game couldn’t be brought over to this platform without any great difficulty.
Why would they say “by gamers for gamers”, because everyone involved with this project is involved with the community on a personal level, they are gamers and enthusiasts, you can chat directly with many of them on the dingoonity forums if you like, there is no misrepresentation there.
As for emulators, from what i’ve seen with my own eyes comparing to my own hacked PSP, and my own android devices, and even my PC…. this little device by far outshines them all, from what i’ve seen of Open Pandora in youtube videos, it even manages to outperform that in emulation…. though I think that’s largely because the Pandora community just isn’t large enough to get the bugs properly worked out of the emulators.
@Lorz: fair enough. I still think 320×240 is a joke for a screen today, but it seems it’s just a personal opinion. As somebody else said above, 640×480 would have downscaled perfectly for 320×240, while allowing more flexibility in terms of multimedia and modern games. Am I the only one who enjoyed VGA and SVGA games in the nineties?
Not at all, I am in total agreement about the screen, I wish they’d have went with something higher res.
Open Pandora never closed you can buy one. http://www.openpandora.org/
Yes, sadly it is too expensive nowadays 🙁 . The price hasn’t changed since it was announced 4 years ago… which is understandable from a pure practical point of view, but…
I was on the fence of buying one instead of a psp 3000 back in the days. Sadly they got massively delayed 🙁
I think there is a genuine misconception about the aims of this device. It actually was designed with the community in mind, head over to Dingoonity and check out the early threads there. In fact the community had a huge input into the specs based on what they needed from it, not to make it look good on paper.
Once again, it is for retro emulation and playing retro ports, if you want to play modern indie games then please buy a console more suited to that at the magic $70 price tag you think the Zero should retail for – you’ll have to design and build one because it doesn’t exist, but whatever…. If you want substandard emulation buy a used PSP, but don’t pretend that there are better devices suited to this puropse than the Zero.
And @wololo I didn’t realise that Wagic was your game, I had never heard of it so sorry if me dismissing it offended you. In all my years playing retro and handheld games on various platforms and visiting forums I have never heard anybody talking about it so my comment still stands, I don’t think it will be missed on the Zero. Sorry about that but such is life.
I just can understand people not wanting to buy a device but being critical because it doesn’t do what you want it to even though it’s aims are completely different? Seems a bit silly to me.
If you want a high resolution device that plays modern games, has all the buttons and analog sticks of a modern controller, sends output to the TV without cables, has a dual core processor and 2gb ram all whilst keeping the price down then you’ll have to make one. That’s exactly how the GCW0 came into existence and is exactly why the initial batches sold out long before kickstarter and long before the first one was even made.
The community likes this device a lot more than naysayers here think……
In the end I think we are saying the same thing.
The GCW zero is “only” targeting oldies arcade games and emulators. I am ok with this, but this is not exactly how the Kickstarter project introduces it. Instead, emphasis is put in the presentation on “indie developers” and “homebrews”, but this is not really what the device is about. Fine, but the presentation of the project on Kickstarter should have been clearer.
Please note that I didn’t say that my dream homebrew console would be available for $70, I said that the GCW Zero should be available for $70 given its specs. I personally, am ready to pay somewhere between $300 and $400 for a homebrew handheld with up to date specs. Something like what the Pandora was 4 years ago, but with slightly updated hardware, and better control of the schedule 😛
I know that Wagic is not a mainstream game, I just find it strange that someone who pretends to be backing a project “by gamers, for gamers” has by default so few respect for indie game projects (and that is independent of the game’s quality or who created it).
It is fine to create a console that aims at running emulators only. But let’s not have ambiguous statements in the project description saying that the console is all about homebrew and indie developers, when clearly it is not.
Wagic is an awesome game, you should try it, and I completely disagree about it “not being missed”…. we in the PSP homebrew crowd love it and would greatly miss it.
wololo, the reason of a 320×240 is clearly stated in the FAQ.
If you did some research in the dingoonity forums, it was long ago asked to the community when the device was still in the design process. The majority agreed that 320×240 was the best choice.
It does not require rescaling, it saves precious CPU cycles, it does not catapult the final price, and it requires less battery power so the console will have a greater battery life.
Just because your homebrew game doesn’t support 320×240 does not mean that other people won’t develop for it. Zear, for example, is already developing a homebrew game for the GCW Zero.
The reason for choosing 320×240 was NOT stated in the FAQ when I wrote this article, and I do not check the bottom of the Kickstarter every 5 minutes to see if it has been updated. I can see that now it is there (when I wrote the article, the FAQ only had one question I think, which was “are games in the video closed source?”
It is good that they added this.
If the dingoonity forums are the place to go to understand the design decisions behind the project, then shouldn’t that be stated clearly on the kickstarter page?
What resolution do all other retro (open or not) handhelds have? Oh yeah, it’s the same as this!
Trust me, along with the case design it was one of the biggest discussions on the forums and most people (not to mention the OD developers) thought this was the best bet. The other big issue was the case – putting it in a cheap plastic PSP case would have drastically cut the price and production time, however the community wanted quality and good original design, which is what they got.
There is already lots of homebrew for this resolution, look at Dingoo A320, Caanoo, GP2X Wiz….. Not a problem for them at all. People are developing for it all the time.
Before development on OpenDingux was really ramped up (and those guys work hard for free) look at the names of the people who were developing for Dingoo, then have a look at the list of names on the GCW Kickstarter page. Sound familiar? They know what they’re doing.
One last remark about the price – take a look at the Neo Geo X. This is a very similar (lower) spec handheld to the GCW0, underclocked and running a bastardised Dingux with the FBA port (no sources and violates GPL). It’s cheaply made and does a fraction of what the GCW0 does (poorly I might add) yet sells for twice the price and people lap it up, cheap plastic controller and all.
Maybe GCW should have bought a license, violated GPL and closed the system off?
I don’t know where you are coming from with the NeoGeoX. Do you see me praising the quality of that console? No, and for a good reason.
Side question: where can I find a list of homebrews for the dingoo family? In particular, homebrews that are not emulators or ports of commercial games.
I don’t think there is a complete list anywhere, but right now the following homebrew games were ported with the approval of their authors:
* Sqrxz 3
* Unnamed Monkey Game (my own game)
* Puzzletube
* Worship Vector
* Flare
* Samegoo
* Astrolander
There is more homebrew already ported, but we never contacted the authors (usually because there is no need to – they’re GPL):
* Blockrage
* Heroes
* Spout
* Liero (I have talked with the original author once, it wasn’t exactly about GCW but rather Dingoo and Dreamcast ports, yet he was very happy someone is porting his old game)
There’s also a ton of the old commercial game engines ported, so that you don’t think it’s all we have.
And yes, GCW originates from the Dingoo scene, so we have quite a repository of games we have ported to the Dingoo in the past, which we are slowly polishing and porting to GCW one by one.
Some of these that will be ported in the future and belong to the homebrew category:
* Powder
* Meritous
* ASCII Portal
* Biniax 1/2
* Freedroid
* GNU Robbo
* Powermanga
* Wizznic!
* Nethack
* Super Transball 2
That’s just from the top of my head. That list will be MUCH longer in the future 🙂
Also, thanks for giving us a chance and preordering a unit. If you want to join our community, we’re available at #gcw irc channel on freenode.org
Here is an (outdated) list of homebrew for the Dingoo A320:
http://wiki.dingoonity.org/index.php?title=Dingux:Games
You can find some more titles in this repository: http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/dingoo.cgi
I used it as an example of a similar spec console that people lap up which is nowhere near the quality of the Zero yet costs much more (twice the price over here), which “borrows” code from the community.
People have “hacked” it to run OD but you can get the real deal for much less.
For Dingux software check out the Dingoonity Wiki and openhandhelds:
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/dingoo.cgi
http://wiki.dingoonity.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
Some of that will be for the A320 Native OS and some will be legacy Dingux and will not work on OD at the moment (due to coding habits, not OD).
Oh and regarding the Vita for emulation, a 32gb memory card will set me back nearly £60 so make sure you take that into account.
Seriously , the point is :
Would you rather have CGW-ZERO or a jailbroken vita with Ark.
I would choose a CGW-ZERO .
But then you give up on the great screen, vita and psp games, youtube, web browsing, the touch pad, the dual nub… Sure, the vita is almost twice the price… if emulators are the only thing you are looking for, I guess yes…
Yes they are most of what i’m looking for .
Also , i haven’t said the vita is worse . But for homebrew and emulation CGW-Zero is nicer . At least now.
Personally wololo, I really want to like the Vita, but I can’t, not because of the hardware or the price, because I find all of that great, if not amazing…. but the company behind it has continually and arrogantly sc*** gamers and homebrew enthusiasts over and over and over and over and over……. I cannot support that, my conscience simply will not allow me, it may seem harsh, but i really hope Sony either changes, or simply leaves the consumer media industry all together, it may sound childish to wish for the demise of a company like this, but they have done far more damage than good to an industry that is supposed to be all about having fun.
I’m with you on this. The only reason I got a Vita is to blog about the hacking side of it, and my personal hopes is that things like the Ouya, or the recent moves on Steam are going to disrupt the market in a way that will either kill Sony on the Western market, or make them change their ways dramatically. Sounds far fetched, but one can hope 🙂
Edit: as a device though, the Vita is simply awesome. But I agree that it hurts me more and more to give money to a company like Sony.
I agree, it’s an amazing device, I love my PSP, but the Vita is what the PSP should have been in the first place, I’d really love to have one, but only if it’s made by someone(anyone) than Sony, lol.
I’ve recently been playing with cheap android handhelds…. JXD S5110, it’s alot like the Droid X360 you reviewed, except arguably improved in some areas, and worse in some other areas…and though it hasn’t been perfect, I’m pretty pleased so far.
Oh, btw wololo, there is an upcoming Android based handheld which I think you might find interesting, it is retailing for $150 US, and is set to compete with the Archos gamepad, its features are a 7 inch screen(which is a little too big for a handheld imo), Amlogic MX dual core 1.5ghz CPU with mali 400 GPU, dual analogs(and they are supposed to be actual analogs….. but we are wating for confirmation from a distributor who has offered to test it and report the results)…. It’s the JXD S7300, and if interested, you can find out more about it at dingoonity in the android section, or at willgoo.com… a distributor for dingoos and android handhelds, who also happens to be active on the dingoonity forums.
Sincerely , ” I would prefer a psp” . I would prefer a GCW Zero . You pay additional 35 dollars for :
Three times the processor
Open Source
No jailbreaking
You can play Starfox on the SNES Emulator.Try it on the psp emulator.
G-Sensor .
4 times the ram .
Sincerely , if you like emulation , but you prefer to buy a psp , you’re drunk brother .
I agree with your original opinion 100% wololo. I’m rather disappointed. And the fact that Android has officially become a non-open source OS means that things like this have no future without being expensive. So we’re going to pay a lot for something that a good Android phone and a MOGA gamepad couldn’t already give us…and in better quality.
So if they decide to take the route of using an older Android OS, then people will also lose out because most apps other than emulators will cease working. This thing is basically an NES controller with 1 nub and designed to play emulators. I’d welcome it with arms wide open in 2009. I would’ve called it a marvel of technology in 2005. But in 2013, everyone already has this device already in their house.
This doesn’t run on Andriod. It runs on a customized linux called OpenDingux, or OD for short. OD was originally created for the Dingoo A320. (Note: There was a previous Linux distro for the Dingoo A320 was called Dingux which commonly used to replace the default Symbian based OS. All Linux distros on the A320 were always unofficial.) At some point the OD maintainers, brewers, and supporters decided that they could create a better device. Since they already had working software, they designed and build newer hardware around it. The GCW-Zero is this device.
The default os for Dingoo A320 wasn’t Symbian but uC/OS-II 😉
I remembered it being Symbian from some reason. Thanks for the correction.
Perfect device for homebrew. I would prefer a screen featuring 16:9 aspect ration, but I suppose that can either be emulated or a screen replacement shouldn’t be a problem. I would actually go ahead and move all the hardware into a PSP casing.
Are these available for order now? I would like to present one of these to my class and see if we can maybe do an independent project, programming a few apps and games for this platform rather than the others. I’m sure my professors wouldn’t mind at all.
They are currently only available via KickStarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gcw/gcw-zero-open-source-gaming-handheld
A programming class project sounds awesome! You can count on the help of our devteam if you join our IRC channel #gcw on freenode.org
After some serious debate in the comments section here on our Kick Starter page and other forums, we have decided to upgrade the RAM from 256MB to 512MB.
We have also decided to upgrade the internal storage capacity from 8GB to 16GB on the console.
We think both of these upgrades will provide more value for the money you are pledging to get this great gaming console we call The GCW-Zero.
I know it’s all about emulation, but why everyone keeps forgeting about native PSP games?
I don’t see anyone making high profilr games for GCW such as God of War, Lumines, Crisis Core, Patapon, Wipeout and so on…
Built for gamers by gamers yet it has no second analogue stick?
The single analogue stick it has doesn’t look very good either.
This rubs me to no end, you have no idea. The only thing I can take away from this is that only a couple of PS1 games require two sticks (Ape Escape and R/C Stunt Copter by my recollection)
Also…this thing can’t emulate a dreamcast, and that’s almost literally all I want at this juncture. A portable N64 sounds grand as well…but not $130 grand.
Id like to give this project the benefit of the doubt but by only building it with 1 analog such as the psp, you might as well just get a psp. Bye for any chances of having any sort of f2p styles of games on it or any other 3d 3 person view games.