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Tapwave Zodiac: PSP Predecessor

Palm aficionados and gadget-mongers (like this blogger) can’t and never will forget the Tapwave Zodiac. It was (and still is) simply the most beautiful Palm-powered device ever released. It had a HUGE Hi-res screen, beautiful form factor, and hardware 3D graphics support. It had Bluetooth for web browsing, connectivity, and multiplayer gaming. The Zodiac came in two flavors, a $300 32MB model, and a $400 128MB Model.

In addition to being a gaming console, the Tapwave Zodiac was also a multimedia powerhouse. It could do video, mp3s, pictures, and web browsing. Being Palm-powered, it also was a full-featured PDA and could be used for the usual personal information management functions. (Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, etc.)

Any of this starting to sound familiar? Yup, it sounds just like the Sony PSP. As a matter of fact, in many ways, the Zodiac was a superior device to the PSP. It had all the multimedia capability, a full-fledged operating system, and the entire catalog of Palm-OS applications available for it. It also lacked the constant crippleware that Sony continually dishes out in their periodic “system updates”. So why did the Zodiac die, while the PSP is so successful? One word: Licensing

What hope did Tapwave, a fledgling company with less than 50 employees have of getting popular titles licensed and developed for their gaming console? Very little–and the “catalog” of officially released Tapwave games shows it. The only titles released for the Zodiac that anyone would recognize were Duke Nukem Mobile, Spyhunter, Madden Football, and Doom Mobile. Although these games boasted impressive graphics, 4 titles is not enough to make a console.

When you consider how much trouble a giant like Nokia had getting titles for their console –It’s no wonder that Tapwave couldn’t compete. It only took an announcement from Sony that they were developing a handheld and the Tapwave Zodiac’s fate was sealed.

The PSP was released March 2005; Tapwave went bankrupt in June 2005.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Articles, PDA/Smartphone, Portable, Wireless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.