The Gizmondo Financial Report

Now no one could say that we haven’t been supportive of the Gizmondo in the past, and I still maintain that the feature set of the handheld is superb… So it’s always been a mystery as to just why the Gizmondo isn’t doing very well.

There are a few obvious reasons, such as the initially limited availability and the poor games support, but for a while now, there’s been worrying signs of what can at best be described as ‘odd’ management decisions. You want examples? Take the launch party at the prestigious and obviously extremely expensive Regent Street store… to which barely a handful of games journalists were invited and then treated to the spectacle of some obviously bemused and confused b-list celebs touting the Gizmondo’s value.

Now follow that up with a stock level destined for disaster, with roughly a thousand units available from the store on launch day… That is, of course, if anyone actually knew what it was as, as HEXUS.gaming has commented before, the marketing campaign has been, frankly, piss poor and very few people outside of the keen gamers actually know what a Gizmondo is, let alone where they can get one or what the hell it does.

Earlier this year it seemed that Tiger Telematics, the owners of Gizmondo, had realised that perhaps people might want to buy the console and they struck deals with high street stores such as Comet, HMV and Argos to start selling the cheaper Smart-Ads enabled version… except when I attempted to buy one they were ‘out of stock’ in all three of my local, above named stores… hmmm.

In speaking to Gizmondo, just getting a sample was proving to be extremely difficult, with “press samples are very limited” being the answer with each enquiry I made. I could understand that with a piece of hardware prior to release, but SIX months after release? Sorry, that one just doesn’t wash.

So the release of Gizmondo’s financial report has made some very, very interesting reading… very interesting reading indeed. Now, far be it from me to criticise how a company sees fit to spend it’s money, that’s entirely up to them, and for the sake of fairness, until Gizmondo comment on their financial report (which, let’s face it, is very unlikely), we’ll just have to assume that the financial goings-on revealed by the report are just the way Gizmondo do business.

Now before you think this is going to be a load of boring stuff about stocks and shares, percentages and dividends, just hang on before you toddle off. This is interesting stuff… very interesting stuff. Now read on...