The Death Of Game Park, A Gaming Handheld Company Downfall

Game Park was a Korea handheld gaming company that launched the GP32 handheld in 2001. The very limited choice of games had caused GP32 to become “powerless” against Nintendo GBA at that time. The only benefit of getting a GP32 was its support of Smart Media card, a plus for homebrewers.

But the first step to the company’s downfall was the decision to port PlayStation games to GP32. A large license fee was of course, paid to Sony. It was like burning money for nothing.

The next misfortune was the splitting of Game Park. Some employees of Game Park felt that they should support an open source gaming gadget and hence they left Game Park, formed Game Park Holdings and a Linux-based handheld, GP2X, was born in 2005.

Game Park continued to release the XGP (Extreme Game Player) series but supporters of the GP32 were not impressed. Rather, they gave their votes to GP2X.

The final crush for Game Park was the intense competition of the gaming handheld wars. GP32 never made its way to North America, the pressure from both Sony PSP and Nintendo DS also made XGP become more like a MP3 player than a full-fledged gaming handheld.

We all know no sales equals to no money or profit, that’s why Game Park closed its doors this year, 2007.

The only consolation was that the Game Park website has turned into something more popular with the teens, that is, a designer shoes site.

RIP via Sina Games, Wiki