14 DAY TRIAL // Panasonic Corporation, the Japanese electronic firm, has announced that it is no longer developing the Jungle handheld, saying that there are changes in the market space for it and that it will focus its resources elsewhere.
A statement from Panasonic says, “Panasonic decided to suspend further development due to changes in the market and in our own strategic direction,” but it's not clear whether the concept behind the Jungle platform is still interesting to the company or whether it will no longer be interested in the handheld space.
The Jungle was officially announced in October 2010 and Panasonic said that its handheld will have a full QWERTY keyboard and a touchpad, with a high resolution display designed specifically for MMO experiences.
Initially, Panasonic was saying that it was working with Bigpoint and with Jagex to create Jungle specific versions of the Battlestar Galactica Online MMO that can be played in a browser and of RuneScape.
The idea was that players that were MMO interested could play on the go on the Jungle and then switch over to another platform at home without feeling any change in how the game works.
The stop in development for Jungle is probably linked to the increase in competition in the handheld space and in the more generous space of mobile gaming.
Nintendo has just launched the 3DS device in Japan, with North America and Europe set to follow in March, delivering full three dimensional gaming to mobile players.
Sony has also made the PlayStation Portable 2 official, calling it the NGP, and plans to launch it before the end of the year with computing power that is similar to that delivered by the PlayStaton 3.
Players are also engaging with more games on smartphones, especially those coming from Apple and those running Android, and Panasonic probably saw that there was no clear market for the Jungle in this space.