Interview: Chip Andre – OpenPandora

We at OLC are always looking for new ways to show our readers things they haven’t seen before; when news of a fully opensource, portable platform leaked down the pipeline, we thought it best to show it off to you guys.

The Pandora: Creating the World’s Most Powerful Handheld Gaming System

Developing a game is hard -- Developing a console is even harder.

When you start to throw in financial losses, manufacturer ineptitude, and shipping delays -- all weighed down with an insane amount of hype, anticipation and expectation from the independent game and homebrew community -- the pressure is enough to discourage even the largest of development teams.  The developers of the Pandora have gone through hell, and although they are not yet out of the woods, they are determined to get the damned thing out the door.  The Pandora promises both a legitimate and completely opensource gaming platform, as well as performing as a fully functional ultra-mobile PC.  I had the opportunity to interview Chip Andre, Press Relations Representative for the OpenPandora Project.

For starters, this is quite the ambitious project.  Could you give us a quick rundown of what the Pandora is?

The Pandora is a handheld gaming / computing platform based on the latest ultramobile hardware.  It’s much more portable than a netbook and much more capable than a PSP or DS.  We’re using the OMAP3530 SoC, which is powerful enough to handle web browsing, email and productivity software, as well as advanced 3D gaming like Quake 3.  It is also energy efficient enough to provide 8-10 hours of gaming and/or computing per battery charge.  There’s not much that you can do on a full size Linux laptop that you can’t do on the Pandora.

I’m sure a lot of us are familiar with GamePark and their line of handhelds. Would you consider the Pandora to be the spiritual successor to them?  What are the similarities and differences between the two?

It is a spiritual successor to the GP32 and GP2X in that it was created by several distributors and developers for the GamePark handhelds, and it already shares the same community.  The GP32, GP2X and soon the Wiz are all great open source gaming handhelds, but they’re just gaming handhelds.  They were never designed to be used as general purpose computing devices, and that limits their usefulness.  All three GamePark models were on the mid-to-low end of the power spectrum when they were released, while the Pandora will ship with the most powerful ARM processor currently available -- the Cortex A8.  The GamePark handhelds are all limited to 320x240 displays and basic gaming controls, while the Pandora has the high-resolution display and extensive input options necessary for a full computing experience, as well as more advanced games.  While the GP32 and GP2X provided the foundation of the open source gaming handheld community, the Pandora is several evolutionary steps ahead of its predecessors.

Now, a lot of people look at the Pandora and incorrectly assume it to be a pure emulation platform.  Could you tell us a little more about what else it is capable of?

Like I said, there is not much you can do on a full sized Linux computer that you can’t do on the Pandora.  The system is capable of running everything from basic office productivity software, to graphics editing, to 3D modeling, to digital audio editing.  The Pandora can play back pretty much any form of audio and video media you can think of (non-DRM, of course).  On the gaming front, almost anything that is open source and can be compiled for ARM is a possibility.  We already have Quake 3 running quite nicely and it hasn’t even been fully optimized yet.  There are quite a few games and emulators that have already been ported, and many more original titles in the works.

We understand that the Pandora is not being put on the market to compete with larger companies, and you are targeting homebrew developers and programmers.  How large is your community?

It’s a bit hard to estimate.  Not everybody who is working on Pandora software is also active on the forums.  Unlike the big gaming companies, we don’t make licensing deals.  Anybody who wants to program for the platform is free to do so, and they don’t have to check in with us first.  There are about two dozen projects in the works that I know of, some of which have multiple contributors.  More important than numbers is the fact that the people who are coding for the Pandora all seem very excited about it.  The amount of sheer activity rivals (if not surpasses) the homebrew scenes for most other gaming platforms.

Have any third-party developers contacted you with interest in the Pandora?

Yes, I’ve received several inquiries and requests for hardware from professional developers.  Most requests have been from small indie game studios, but I’ve received some interest from a couple of very large companies.  Even if nothing comes of any of the inquiries, it is still nice to know you’re on the radar.

The Pandora has been in production for a long time.  What were some of the difficulties you experienced during the development process?

Name anything that can go wrong and it probably did at some point.  The first company we contracted to design an early version of the Pandora charged us $20,000 and came up with something just as limited as the GamePark handhelds had been.  We had to cut our losses and move on with designing things ourselves.  The first batch of analog control pads (which were custom designed and manufactured for the Pandora) were defective and had to be redone.  One of the first batches of completed dev boards was destroyed in shipping and we lost over a month waiting for them to be replaced.  We’ve had multiple problems with availability of several parts along the way, but we have everything we need to start manufacturing now.  But the biggest problem we’ve faced is with banking.  I won’t bore you with the gory details, but basically our bank decided that taking ~$1 million in credit card pre-orders was too risky.  Of course they made this decision after we had already sold out the first batch of 4000 units and insisted that we refund everybody.  They took their sweet time processing the refunds too, and six months later still haven’t refunded some customers.  Everybody who had ordered had to order again, only this time we could only accept payment via direct bank transfer, check or money order.  Amazingly, nearly everybody who had ordered was still excited enough about the Pandora to go through the hassle of re-ordering.  If it hadn’t been for the devotion of the project leaders and the faith of the community, the project would have died.

We’ve seen the most recent video flaunting a complete, working prototype.  Can we expect mass-production to begin soon?

Hopefully very soon.  We’re still waiting to test some minor changes to the prototype case and there is some certification that needs to be done yet.  With some luck we could fire up the assembly line in as little as 3-4 weeks.

What do you envision the optimal future for the Pandora?

At the very least, the Pandora should see the same amount of niche success as its predecessors.  With all that it can do and as little as it costs, we hope it will do quite a bit better.  Selling millions of Pandoras is a long shot, but it’s not completely out of the question.  It all depends on the developer community and what sort of games / apps they decide to bring to the platform.  The guys and girls coding for the Pandora are already an incredibly impressive bunch, and we have every expectation that the community will continue to grow and their work will continue to impress.  With their apps and games building an impressive software library, the Pandora should do quite well indeed.

Fantastic, we hope so too.  Is there anything you’d like to add?  Anything we should be looking forward to?

What I’m really looking forward to right now is getting the first batch out the door.  Our customers pre-ordered six months ago and they’ve been waiting patiently through all the setbacks ever since.  I’m looking forward to these people actually getting the device they’ve been drooling over for the past two years so they can start doing amazing things with it.  That is not to say that once the Pandora ships the excitement is over.  There are several potential deals in the works that just might bring some really impressive game titles to the Pandora.  Also, once the first batch has shipped, the project leaders can move on to promoting the system with coding competitions and giveaways that will hopefully bring even more developer interest.  The Pandora is going to be around for quite a while, and I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the hardware is capable of.

We’d like to thank Chip for taking the time to answer our questions, and we wish everyone involved in the development the best of luck.  We’ll be getting our hands on the Pandora as soon as we can, so stay tuned to One Last Continue for the full review.

You can find out more information on the OpenPandora project here: http://www.openpandora.org