Known to be one of the slower animals on the planet, the Snail has now lent its name to a new Android console hardware maker from China.
I stumbled upon snail purely by chance, but had to go in to their large booth to check out their Android gaming wares, and also ask them why the thought ‘Snail’ was the best name for a gaming hardware maker. On display were the Snail W3D Android smartphone with built-in gaming controls and the Snail Obox games console.
I was unable to demo the Snail W3D but according to the specifications the device boasts glass free 3D, an octacore MT6592 chipset, 2GB RAM and LTE. A 5.5-inch display sounds about standard these days for an Android phone, but due to the fact that the Snail W3D has those dedicated gaming buttons, the device is actually a lot larger than many standard phones on the market. That said though the specs (including a 13 mega-pixel main camera) are very good considering the Chinese RRP of only 1000 Yuan!
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I did manage a short demo of the Snail Obox and from the game I tried the graphics and control was extremely smooth. Hardly surprising considering the Android based home gaming system packs in an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor and 4GB RAM. There is even scope to add additional hard drives to the Obox up to 500GB in size. RRP in China for the Snail Obox is 1200 Yuan, not at all bad.
During my visit I also brought up my thoughts on Snail not being the best name for a fast Android gaming platform, you wouldn’t expect Ferrari to make a car named the Snail would you? Apparently the name was chosen as they like the philosophy of the Snail. Slowing moving and fighting all the way.
What do you make of the Snail Android gaming devices? Keep posted for more MWC content.
What a contradicting name for a Tegra K1 powered gaming console.
does it play its own exclusive games or simply ps4/xbox one titles?
Angry bird
It plays Android games.
well , not so impressive now .. is it?
so much for being a CONSOLE :p
The Nvidia K1 can manage to play games we have seen on PS3 or XBOX 360 since the power of the GPU of those consoles is pretty much the same of this one. We have seen porting of PS2 games and the market is growing so my guess is that soon we’ll see PS3 games for android too. For PS4 games we have to wait because the GPU of that console is 6 times more powerful than Nvidia K1 and 3-4 times than the Nvidia X1 which is not yet released
thats good… we’ll finally see CHEAPER android consoles playing next gen titles that would have otherwise belonged to ONLY their badly priced counterparts!
EXCELLENT!
I wouldn’t count on full fledged next gen games coming to Android anytime soon. The android console market is still very niche there is no incentive for AAA studios to develop the time and resources to develop for Android. Not to mention many games have exclusive rights to one console or the other. For now we will continue to see PS2/Xbox ports with the occasional PS3/360 ports.
Well, that is where you are wrong. Nvidia just revealed the new Shield Console (not to be confused with their portable Shield… yeah, the naming sucks as bad as the Wii and WiiU).
Basically, it’s a $200 Nvidia K1 Android console – which is cheaper than this Snail one – and developers are working on bringing full-fledged console games to the platform! Crysis 3 for example is going to run on this!
On top of console-grade games running on this, you will be able to stream PC games from Nvidia’s servers which house thousands of Nvidia GTX 980 cards! Basically you have 1080p 60fps streaming if you have the internet to support it.
This is a way better deal overall compared to this Snail Console.
Studios aren’t developing games specifically for the Shield or any other Android console. Nvidia is porting those games to it’s console. There is a big difference. Streaming of games can be done on some of the most basic consoles out there that is nothing new or Android specific.
Like I said AAA studios won’t be developing games specifically for Android for quite some time.
Those two old consoles are actually a lot more powerful than they’re given credit for. While the GPU power of portable devices has come a long way, the ARM cores are still nowhere near the level of the XBOX360 or PS3 cpu. In fact, the 3 core XBOX360 powerpc cpu still outperforms the PS4/XBOX1 octacore.
Well, GPU is what it really counts on consoles so don’t let get fooled by the difference of CPU frequencies. It’s a different architecture and on paper yes, the PS3 CPU is slighter more powerful than the one we have on PS4 and back in time that choice was made to pick up the slack from a weak GPU. The Nvidia G70 of the PS3 had a power of 230 GFLOPS while the AMD Radeon GCN of the PS4 has a power of 1850 GFLOPS. So we can easily say that the PS4 is roughly 10 times more powerful than the PS3. We are taking about playing games and not counting prime numbers to justify the need of CPU.
It’s still a console. Console refers to the box itself not the games it plays.
try playing games on your PS4/XBox at 4K resolution !
Half the PS4/XBox games dosen’t even support Full HD(1080p).
k den , masterrace
£100 for the phone and £125 for the console before UK rape tax, good prices.
There is gaming console named the “Wii” that is one of the greatest selling of all time. Clearly a name means very little.
What a contradicting name for a Tegra K1 powered gaming console.
does it play its own exclusive games or simply ps4/xbox one titles?
Angry bird
It plays Android games.
well , not so impressive now .. is it?
so much for being a CONSOLE :p
The Nvidia K1 can manage to play games we have seen on PS3 or XBOX 360 since the power of the GPU of those consoles is pretty much the same of this one. We have seen porting of PS2 games and the market is growing so my guess is that soon we’ll see PS3 games for android too. For PS4 games we have to wait because the GPU of that console is 6 times more powerful than Nvidia K1 and 3-4 times than the Nvidia X1 which is not yet released
thats good… we’ll finally see CHEAPER android consoles playing next gen titles that would have otherwise belonged to ONLY their badly priced counterparts!
EXCELLENT!
Those two old consoles are actually a lot more powerful than they’re given credit for. While the GPU power of portable devices has come a long way, the ARM cores are still nowhere near the level of the XBOX360 or PS3 cpu. In fact, the 3 core XBOX360 powerpc cpu still outperforms the PS4/XBOX1 octacore.
Well, GPU is what it really counts on consoles so don’t let get fooled by the difference of CPU frequencies. It’s a different architecture and on paper yes, the PS3 CPU is slighter more powerful than the one we have on PS4 and back in time that choice was made to pick up the slack from a weak GPU. The Nvidia G70 of the PS3 had a power of 230 GFLOPS while the AMD Radeon GCN of the PS4 has a power of 1850 GFLOPS. So we can easily say that the PS4 is roughly 10 times more powerful than the PS3. We are taking about playing games and not counting prime numbers to justify the need of CPU.
It’s still a console. Console refers to the box itself not the games it plays.
I wouldn’t count on full fledged next gen games coming to Android anytime soon. The android console market is still very niche there is no incentive for AAA studios to develop the time and resources to develop for Android. Not to mention many games have exclusive rights to one console or the other. For now we will continue to see PS2/Xbox ports with the occasional PS3/360 ports.
Well, that is where you are wrong. Nvidia just revealed the new Shield Console (not to be confused with their portable Shield… yeah, the naming sucks as bad as the Wii and WiiU).
Basically, it’s a $200 Nvidia K1 Android console – which is cheaper than this Snail one – and developers are working on bringing full-fledged console games to the platform! Crysis 3 for example is going to run on this!
On top of console-grade games running on this, you will be able to stream PC games from Nvidia’s servers which house thousands of Nvidia GTX 980 cards! Basically you have 1080p 60fps streaming if you have the internet to support it.
This is a way better deal overall compared to this Snail Console.
Studios aren’t developing games specifically for the Shield or any other Android console. Nvidia is porting those games to it’s console. There is a big difference. Streaming of games can be done on some of the most basic consoles out there that is nothing new or Android specific.
Like I said AAA studios won’t be developing games specifically for Android for quite some time.
try playing games on your PS4/XBox at 4K resolution !
Half the PS4/XBox games dosen’t even support Full HD(1080p).
k den , masterrace
There is gaming console named the “Wii” that is one of the greatest selling of all time. Clearly a name means very little.
Two corrections regarding the phone: (1) it’s got an MT6595. (2) Good luck getting it for 1000 Yuans — that was probably a typo or over-optimistic price estimate. Being an iReadyGo device, expect to pay at least $250 when it comes out.
Update: You can already preorder:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/MUCH-W3D-Game-Console-Smart-Phone-MTK-Octa-Core-Android-4-4-2-0GHz-2GB-RAM16GB/1032543_32270732919.html
Two corrections regarding the phone: (1) it’s got an MT6595. (2) Good luck getting it for 1000 Yuans — that was probably a typo or over-optimistic price estimate. Being an iReadyGo device, expect to pay at least $250 when it comes out.
Update: You can already preorder:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/MUCH-W3D-Game-Console-Smart-Phone-MTK-Octa-Core-Android-4-4-2-0GHz-2GB-RAM16GB/1032543_32270732919.html
When will OBox be released outside China ?
When will OBox be released outside China ?