Name: Gizmondo: The Worst-Selling Handheld Console Ever
Uploaded: 2020-03-06T23:03:28.000Z
Duration: 29 min 25 s
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And this is the Tiger Telematics Gizmondo released in 2005 at an initial asking price

This infamous handheld gaming device was arguably doomed from the start due to a variety of

extenuating circumstances that we will talk about.

And it became one of the most infamous tech failures to come out of the first decade of

It sold fewer than 25,000 units worldwide before its parent company underwent bankruptcy

Which means that it did even worse than one of its contemporaries, the Tapwave Zodiac,

which was also a huge flop but almost looks like a success in comparison with that selling

So a big thank you to Adrian for lending me this complete in box example to make this

video, because Gizmondo packages like this are rare and getting harder to find and I

But first I do want to attempt to answer some of the questions

as to why this thing ended up how it did.

What was it about the Gizmondo that made it such a noteworthy story of failure?

Well that is quite the tale indeed, involving investment scams, ties to organized crime,

and a high-speed Ferrari crashing so hard it tore in half.

And while the entire story of what happened behind the scenes is worthy of a documentary

really, today we're mostly going to be focusing on the hardware itself.

But I cannot resist including a condensed overview of the story so let's go ahead and

start with Tiger Telematics, a company not to be confused with Tiger Electronics, that

began in the year 2000 as Eagle Eye Scandinavian.

An electronics business in Sweden founded by Mr. Carl Freer.

Now Eagle Eye mostly distributed GPS devices for their first couple years on the market

but in a rather strange turn of events in 2002 they were acquired by an American carpet

and flooring company based in Jacksonville, Florida called Floor Decor.

Now this business partnership was the brainchild of Stefan Eriksson, an old acquaintance of

And this business deal allegedly was due to wanting to make use of Floor Decor’s over-the-counter

stock listing, renaming the merged companies as Tiger Telematics.

The initial idea was to use Eagle Eye’s GPS experience to create a “child tracking

system” in the form of a portable device to let parents know where their kids are 24/7.

But due to the, uh, unsettling nature of the prospect, plus the fact that getting children

to keep a GPS tracking device with them at all times was a tough sell, Tiger decided

Their new product was an expansion on the idea they called Gametrac, and the goal was

to provide the same child-tracking service but put it inside of a portable game console

instead so that kids would be more inclined to keep it with them.

Early press photos showed a small yellow device that somewhat resembled a pager in its design

accompanied by an announcement that game track would be the official sponsor of the Eddie

Then in November they showed the first prototypes to the public revealing a sleek all-metal

housing with over 100 Java and Mophun games said to be ready for its launch date, all

But by the time it finally showed up at the Microsoft booth at the 2004 Consumer Electronics

Show in Las Vegas, the design had changed somewhat.

there was no metal case anymore since it apparently interfered with the GPS connection and there

was little to no sign of the 100+ games promised the year before.

Furthermore there was a trademark dispute over the name Gametrac in the UK so a new

Not to be confused with Gizmodo the tech blog.

As well as a uk-based subsidiary taking care of much of the marketing known as Gizmondo Europe.

And the UK was also the first to receive the Gizmondo

device when it finally launched on March 19 2005.

And it was not just sold online and in your expected retailers.

The company went all out with their own flagship retail store on London's Regent Street.

They even flew in performers like Busta Rhymes, Pharrell Williams, and Sting to hang out and

perform for their launch event, partying it up with hosts Tom Green and Dannii Minogue.

And in another promotion Gizmondos Stefan Eriksson entered the 2005 24 Hours of LeMans

race in his own Gizmondo-sponsored Ferrari 360 GTC.

However, for all the publicity stunts and celebrity-ridden parties, actual Gizmondo

Tiger expected to sell 4,500 units on launch day alone but

barely managed to move a thousand of them.

The problems with it were numerous but one of the biggest was the price.

The Gizmondo cost more than twice as much as the recently launched Nintendo DS with

CNN Money quoted as saying that on top of its other problems “the product carries

Then there was the lackluster consumer marketing campaign and abysmal developer support with

CNET UK reporting it as “too little, too late.

It’s lacking games support, it's uncool.”

When the Gizmondo finally released in the US in October of 2005 things weren't much

better, and actually they were arguably worse, with the device almost exclusively being sold

in small mall kiosks with very little advertising.

And the game situation did not improve much either, with only eight of the planned fourteen

games ever being released in the US and some of the promised GPS software never showing up here.

And then the lawsuits started pouring in.

Jordan Grand Prix sued them and won one and a half million dollars over not being paid

Then advertising agency Ogilvy sued for more than four million dollars over unpaid marketing

work, followed by MTV suing over Gizmondo Europe

backing out of an agreement to sponsor several shows.

And then on top of the low sales, owing to debtors, and then making so many business

deals trading company shares in lieu of taking cash payments, Gizmondo declared bankruptcy

in January of 2006 having lost a reported 382.5 million dollars in only 45 months of existence.

And then the fascinating cherry on top is Stefan Eriksson, who'd resigned from the company

He first really hit the news all over the place because he was involved in an epic crash

along California's Pacific Coast Highway where he was drunkenly driving a million dollar

Ferrari Enzo at what was initially thought to be around 162 miles an hour.

The wreck sheared the car in two, flung the engine out the back, and the car being only

one of around 400 manufactured someone spectacularly crashing such a rare car and surviving with

only a busted lip would have been news enough.

But this was the ex-Gizmondo executive and the circumstances around the crash were increasingly

strange, so the story gained plenty of outside media attention.

“Chris, that Ferrari Enzo was nearly obliterated in the high-speed crash along the PCH.”

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Gizmondo: The Worst-Selling Handheld Console Ever

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