I posted this on the
http://archosfans.com/ forums but I do not believe anyone will read much less respond to it there so I thought I would post it here as well. You can read the news item this is a response to on the main page.
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Hi Charbax, other members and the internetting public at large,
I would like to respond to your latest news about future Archos products. In this you make some claims as to where a next Archos product should head and expectations of future release dates.
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We can from ArchosFans.com suggest that Archos should not forget to try and include a powerfull 3D chip and position the buttons on both sides of the touch screen which would enable Archos to more directly challenge Nintendo and Sony on the portable video games market.
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Archos can never and should never try to compete in the handheld console market. It should not do this for several reasons.
1] Archos is not a games company and has neither the expertese to develop games in house or the connections to companies that have that expertese. Mophun is nice but as Shane Brinkman-Davis put is in his review of the GMINI400 "The other major problem is Mophun doesn't have any really good games. ... They certainly aren't compelling games like you'll find on your gameboy and certainly not like PC, XBox or Playstation games.". Building up such expertise is too time consuming and frankly too expensive for a company such as Archos and would take away from the things it is currently market leader in (producing PMA's).
2] Archos market strategy is different from Sony's and Nintendo's. Archos aims to make money of the sale of it's devices (it cannot make money of anything else). Sony and Nintendo however lose more then two hundred dollars per sold unit and subsequently make outrages amounts selling the games for them. Archos could never keep up in this race and would do well to stay out something they no doubt no themselves.
This does not mean they should not add support for smaller games to their next generation AV model. The PMA models do not need it but those would benefit from a more powerfull processor that would allow linux games to be played.
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We at ArchosFans.com believe that depending on the current demand for the Pma430 (according to reports worldwide demand for the Pma430 is huge), Archos should be able to release the next generation Pocket Media Assistant within 6 months.
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Very, VERY doubtfull. Developing the PMA430 cannot have been cheap and those cost need to be won back. Releasing a brand new product within six months to replace the PMA430 would make no sence. I also doubt it will take very much more then a year though. According to the reviews I have seen (I have not had the fortune to play with one myself yet) the PDA functionality is a bit lacking and those problems cannot all be solved by replacing software (the PMA is underpowered apparently).
I would like to end with a few list of features I would like to see in the next Archos products.
AV-series (without PDA functionality) wishes in order of importance.
1] VGA screen (I would be very much suprised if the next product where released without such a screen).
2] Better Battery life (The achilies heel of the Archos at present. Mentioned in ALL of its reviews)
3] More and better CODEC support (not all XVID versions seem to work and more importantly AC3 support is AWAL still)
4] Better recording (with better I do not just mean higher resolutions, although that would not hurt either. What I really want is better quality recordings and if at all possible smaller sized files with the no loss of quality)
PMA series (in adition to the above mentioned points)
1] More powerfull CPU. (It is insufficient to compete with current PDA's and as such not a replacement for the one I have now)
2] Bluetooth (I know USB host makes this supurflous to a certain extent but I do not like the idea that all my current bluetooth equipment is useless when I buy a Archos PMA especially as bluetooth use is becomming more prevalent rather then declining)
3] Better WiFi
4] Better standard programs (for the same reason as point 1
5] And for God sake lower the price! (€600 for the PMA430 is too much. The most High end PDA today is the iPaq HX4700 and that has a street price of just over €500. The PMA430 should drop well below that (€450 range) in order to be a good niche alternative)
This is as far as my rant goes for the moment, would like to hear peoples oppinion on this.
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Portable movie players are sort of a hoby of mine and
Archos currently makes the best ones.