GameGadget: A new portable Linux-based console

The British company Blaze Interactive has announced the upcoming release of a new device called GameGadget. The Linux-based device will support games for different platforms and will allow developers to make money on “retro games”.

GameGadget will support 32- and 16-bit games, which publishers will be able to sell through the GameGadgetGames service in the provided DRM. According to the author of the idea, Jason Cooper, this service, similar to the Apple App Store, will allow you to make money on the catalog of existing games, but without additional investment. Developers and publishers will be able to simply download their games without any special adaptation and make a profit.

Blaze Interactive plans to collect “hundreds of thousands of games that are now archived.”

In addition, it is planned to attract new developers, who will be provided with detailed instructions, documentation and a list of libraries.

The main goal of the creators is to create an opportunity to play any games on one device.

Despite the confidence in success, Blaze Interactive will have a difficult time, because this market is already saturated: for many years there have been portable consoles from Nintendo and Sony, the number of applications for iOS and Android is growing rapidly. The bet on cross-platformness may also be wrong, because old console games have already begun to be ported to modern mobile platforms – for example, the Chrono Trigger game is expected to be released on iOS before the end of the year.

The release of GameGadget is scheduled for January 2012; the estimated price is about $ 160.