Tectoy, the company that brought licensed Sega games to Brazil, designed a console specifically for emerging markets. The Zeebo gives users access to a library of games that they can download for a fee, a plan Tectoy believes will thwart piracy problems. Tectoy has more companies than Sega signing up to have their games distributed via the Zeebo too. A product list on the Zeebo page shows Namco Bandai and Capcom supporting the Zeebo with a handful of titles. Tekken 2, Street Fighter Alpha, Sonic Adventure, and a mysterious version of Double Dragon are slated to come out on the console. Resident Evil 4 is sort of on the list too since you can see a link to a broken image in Tectoy’s HTML code, but the linked image says Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. What?
One possibility is TecToy is distributing PC versions of these games since Resident Evil 4 and Sonic Adventure have PC ports. However, games like Alpine Racer 3 and Tekken 2 don’t. TecToy could distribute PlayStation ports, but that would require emulation for PsOne and PS2 games. It’s going to be interesting to see how Tectoy tackles the problem or if they’re going to use fancy mobile phone ports of console games like they’re doing with the Sims. Sure, all of these games are “last-gen”, but Tectoy’s distribution mechanism is so unusual it’s rather interesting. The Zeebo is close to a tangible version of the Phantom console.
Update: A tipster who wishes to remain anonymous shed some more light on the Zeebo system. The console uses BREW, a platform for mobile phone games and some of the titles listed like Ridge Racer and Pac-Mania are reportedly mobile phone games. Resident Evil 4 has a mobile phone version too so it’s quite possible that version will be distributed on the Zeebo. Some of the Zeebo mobile phone ports will be changed with new user interfaces, but it looks like the Zeebo is going to primarily deliver mobile phone games to a TV probably not near you.
Images courtesy of Zeebo.
