Competition Time 2: The Designing of a Handheld

[Hadrian]

Competition Time 2: The Designing of a Handheld​

Sponsored by ​

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Ahoy young shrimpy! We have yet another compy here and this time you can win one of those sparkly looking K101 Revo devices! This is the successor to the K1GBA only with added RTC, headphone functions and more! This prize has been donated by the folk at K1GBA.

Here is the task to win one of these: You are the designer of a brand new company, a company who could be as big as Nintendo and you decide to enter the handheld gaming market. You need to create a new handheld that will compete against the 3DS & PS Vita. You can design this in anyway you want as long as you don't use copyrighted images or imaged of copyrighted hardware...so no putting a iPhone onto a joystick, ok? You can design this on anything you like, be it an actual model, CGI, Deluxe Paint III on a Amiga or even glass sculpture if you so wish, all we ask is that you make the design clear and add specifications. This isn't a art contest, entries will be judged on how clear they design is and also the ideas implemented. Something original could possibly get more points than something that just packs a load of stuff in it.

No ripping off another designs or ideas, to quote Morrissey "Don't plagiarise or take "on loan", 'cause there's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs when you fall". Anyone who does so will be laughed at forever!

Also seeing that you are designing this as a new company, you cannot state that it can play PS3/Wii/3DS/iOS/Tapwave etc. Also stating what it can emulate is a no no, people can assume that themselves from the specs! However you can have Android, PC, Steam or whatever as they are open to 3rd party manufacturers.
I have made an example which you can see at the bottom of the page, obviously you can be more serious, realistic & descriptive.

You can post entries in this thread, specs can be mentioned either in the image or in the post. The competition will close on October 1st 7PM GMT, winner will be announced shortly afterwards. And with that...I'm off!

Click spoiler for crummy example

Spoiler

Introducing the Dragon Pocket Computer! An all new powerful gaming device that also lets you do everything that a PC can!

Specs:
8GB RAM!
A special "YourMum" graphics card that can process near life like visuals and has extra RAM that does that sort of thing!
Brand new "EyeLenseLike" touchcreen that has no glare and is crisps as someone with perfect vision!
Wi-Fi capabilities so fast, you will run out of things to download!
Sound capabilties as crisp and clear as your very own ears...unless you're deaf I guess.
Touchpad that you can use while gaming as well as computer functions!
Games on cartridges that can hold up to 1TB of data.
Something to do with something you wouldn't understand but its awesome!

If you'd rather pre-order a K101 Revo you can do so here. You can also read more about the device here.

 

[Another World]

I hope people don't take this to seriously. this should be a really stress free and fun contest. I also hope they give it their best effort. I'd hate to see a bunch of copy and pasted specs in the form factor of a cell phone.

-another world

 

[dicamarques]

I'm in, working on the Protype SAX 3000 (Because random letters and numbers ended in "thousand" are badass ).

 

[Ben_j]

The good old "do our job for free" contest ?

 

[Hadrian]

The good old "do our job for free" contest ?

Designs aren't for anything. It's meant to be just a bit of fun to win something nice, that is all.

 

[Ben_j]

The good old "do our job for free" contest ?

Designs aren't for anything. It's meant to be just a bit of fun to win something nice, that is all.

Which ALL of these contests always are I'm very well aware of this kind of contests, usually they're made by a company to get new ideas for free...

 

[gifi4]

What do you mean by this statement "However you can have Android, PC, Steam or whatever as they are open to 3rd party manufacturers."
Does it mean you can say your device runs : Android or Windows/OSx/Linux etc or Steam

 

[Satangel]

What do you mean by this statement "However you can have Android, PC, Steam or whatever as they are open to 3rd party manufacturers."
Does it mean you can say your device runs : Android or Windows/OSx/Linux etc or Steam

Yes exactly, you can say it runs Android, or has a Steam client so it can buy games from there or so.

Also, I'm with Another World here, looking forward to the specs

 

[Skelletonike]

Hum... This is pretty interesting, I might try it. =3
Btw, we can create our own company right? Like for example, it can play first party games from X brand.

 

[p1ngpong]

The good old "do our job for free" contest ?

Designs aren't for anything. It's meant to be just a bit of fun to win something nice, that is all.

Which ALL of these contests always are I'm very well aware of this kind of contests, usually they're made by a company to get new ideas for free...

Yeah, no. Hadrian came up with the contest idea himself. All the K101 people did was provide a prize, they didn't set a single term for what the competition should contain.

>implying anyone would steal the idea anyway

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

;O;

 

[Hadrian]

Which ALL of these contests always are I'm very well aware of this kind of contests, usually they're made by a company to get new ideas for free...

You know nothing.

Here is how it went:
I had this idea for the second competition but I thought "nah, we've just had a "design your own headphones, I'll keep it for another one when we can afford to do another compy."
Just before I announced the scavenger hunt Ruilong from K1GBA asked me about a possibility of giving away a K1GBA for a contest. I said no, I didn't like the idea of giving away a device that looked identical to something Nintendo has done.
Another World informed me that K1GBA were doing the K101 Revo that doesn't steal the GBA SP design.
I said "I'll do a compy, put your name on the front page but only if you offer the K101 instead".
They agreed but they said:

I agree with your idea for "design your own handheld". But I need it refer to our Revo K101. Can we do this like" design Revo K101"? At the same time, I wonder when you will run this contest? I want this contest run in a special time. I wonder is there any big festival days coming near? Maybe we can do that and let the contest more interesting.

I said:

Hi,I'd rather have it be a handheld that the members create. It would be more fun if it was something imaginary aimed at the 3DS/Vita market.

Your device would still be mentioned with a link to your website and also obviously we'll say that you're providing the prize yourself.

They accepted the terms.

That was it, I don't bend over for anyone other than my girlfriend and even then NOTHING IS GOING IN THERE! Costello for sure would not let anyone say what we should do, he has a reputation to uphold and he wouldn't tarnish that by letting someone like K1GBA give something to us JUST so they can steal ideas. Think about it, we would ask for a lot more to give away than ONE K101 Revo.

 

[Fear Zoa]

Its hard not to just point at razers project fiona and say "That".

 

[Acetonide]

Hm... Design your own handheld to compete with the current market of 3DS and Sony Vita..
I have a few questions.

1. Does your company need to be For Profit? >.>; I mean, what if we decide we're not trying to profit, design a completely over the top device that would cost way more than the Vita because the hardware is costly.. I mean, when you said we're designing a device to compete one would imagine our design would have to consider pricing among other things for marketing, otherwise we'd just be another Wonderswan, Zodiac or Game.com..

2. All specs should be realistic, correct? Or rather, real and based on real technology? Not just realistic..

3. At what size would it stop being a handheld and start being a tablet/netbook?

Um.. I think I had other questions but since I feel like crap atm this is all I can think of, or rather all I can remember right now. >.

 

[DS1]

 

[Hadrian]

Snip

1. It's up to you.
2. It's up to you.
3.

Design your own handheld to compete with the current market of 3DS and Sony Vita.

Tablet/netbook are in different markets.

 

[p1ngpong]

Is that a serious entry or just a joke? Because if its serious this is exactly the type of lazy entry we don't want to see from people.

Everyone needs to read Hadrians opening post to get an idea of what we are looking for. The headphone competition entries were almost all pathetic. Almost nobody read the questions in the scavenger hunt properly, a lot of people didn't even send in a full set of answers and were expecting to be considered. Judging these contests can at times feel like I am judging entries sent in by five year olds.

I remember when we used to get awesome entries for even the most modest of prizes. But now you would think that we are giving away a postage stamp going by the quality of what we see. It's actually insulting to us considering the effort and expense we go to in order to provide you guys with prizes. Remember that at the moment we don't even have a sponsor to pay for our server costs and haven't had any sponsorship revenue for a while. But somehow Costello keeps coming up with the money to give away decent stuff as prizes given to us by external sources like the K101 are very rare.

I know I am ranting but I just find it seriously annoying these days that all we see is this sort of quality in our competitions. I would dearly love to see some entries that are worth a damn in this competition instead of the usual facepalm worthy trash. If you are going to enter at the very least put some effort into what you submit.

Anyway thanks for spending three minutes on your entry DS1.

/rant

 

[dicamarques]

Well, i just sent mine via PM, *fingers crossed*

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I may actually bite on this one but I'm absolutely shit when it comes to specs. Is there any advice on this part? I have a hardware design in my head and everything but I really don't know how the specs would actually matter.

EDIT: And my entry won't be too shit as I'll try using some Autodesk software for it. Although its been a while since I used any engineering stuff.

 

[Hadrian]

Remember, this isn't a art contest. You can make it look as hot tits as possible but ideas will win.

I may actually bite on this one but I'm absolutely shit when it comes to specs. Is there any advice on this part?

Dunno, maybe look at PC specs for games and take away or add depending on OS, what you want, what you want to add extra like motion shit, time space bending or whatever. Don't just think about graphical specs.

So no one got the Zelda reference yet?

 

[Danny600kill]

So am I ok to do a hand drawn entry and scan it in ( I'm useless at computer image design/editing ) and are we all right to take parts of other handhelds, not directly but for example a 3d screen that doesn't require glasses as I know this is part of the 3ds but its a good idea