Tiger Telematics Gizmondo

Gizmondo is a handheld console released by Tiger Telematics in 2005. The original name of the console was Gametrac and renamed before the launch. It was badly reviewed as the worst selling console. Tiger Telematics actually sold less than 25,000 units worldwide. There are a lot of reasons that the console sales were this low.

First of all, the price was quite high. Gizmondo costed twice as much as the recently launched Nintendo DS. Secondly, one of the announced features was Smart Adds, which never activated. It was supposed to send adds in the home screen (max of 3 adds in a day). However, the price of the console without the adds was higher, which was pointless, since this feature never activated.

Also, at the time of the launch the number of games were extremely low. In UK the console launched with only one game distributed, Trailblazer. Only 8 games released in USA when the console launched, including Traiblazer. In Europe 6 other titles launched, making Gizmondo count only 14 games in its game library. Fan site "Gizmondo Central" rated Trailblazer and SSX 3 as the best games, followed by Sticky Balls and FIFA Football 2005.

Gizmondo was advertised a lot and with a lot of money. The sales didn't respond to the amount of money spend in advertisement. A lot of lawsuits followed because Tiger Telelematics was owing money that spend in these adds. Eventually, Tiger Telematics declared bankruptcy in 2006.

Another spicy fact about Gizmondo that had a negative impact is that one of the executives, Stefan Eriksson, revealed that had troubles with the law in the past, after he crashed a Ferrari Enzo in Malibu (California) which was owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland and somehow end it up in USA!

Lastly, a few days after the launch a widescreen version of Gizmondo announced that never released, a poor decision since some of the potential customers may waited for the improved version of Gizmondo.