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Gizmondo at CES?
Industry shows are interesting beasts to witness. Frequently, we get clues about the future of gaming simply by looking at who decides to show up. There is one big surprise listing at the 2007 CES. According to the CES website, "It's all fun and games for AMD, Apex Digital, ATI, Dell, Logitech, Nvidia, Alienware, Microsoft, Sony and Gizmondo." This is a fairly odd sentiment given the company is now bankrupt and isn't making games anymore. Maybe the CES doesn't pay much attention to the news (or found it near-impossible to decipher) or Gizmondo pre-paid over a year ago and gets an empty booth. Gizmondo doesn't seem to be dying a graceful death. Stories like the Bo Stefan Eriksson story keep cropping up. Maybe the empty booth at the 2007 CES will be the dénouement of this pathetic riches-to-rags story; or maybe a huge surprise with the return of Gizmondo. [Thanks, Falafelkid]
Another Gizmondo exec goes to jail [update 1]
The Los Angeles Times reports that Carl Freer, co-founder and managing director of Gizmondo, was arrested yesterday for allegedly impersonating a police officer in order to obtain a .44 magnum handgun. Police searched Freer's home and 100-foot yacht, turning up 12 rifles and four handguns. A little advice from Joystiq to Freer and Ericksson: what with the guns, the millions wasted, the totaled Enzo Ferrari, the drunk driving, the garage full of "misappropriated" exotic cars, the swank mansions and the yacht, y'all can probably lay off building "street cred" now. We believe you. You're hard. Real hard. Question is, will Fiddy believe you enough to make room for you in his G Unit? [Update 1: Fixed an error in the number of rifles found on Freer's property.]
Gizmondo Execs land at Xero Mobile
Whenever a company asks us to modify anything on the site, we always conduct some research to determine if the item that offends the company is in fact false. Early yesterday morning, Xero Mobile asked us to remove a reader comment that was, in their view, incorrect. The comment suggested that Stefan Ericksson -- the now-jailed exec who totalled a million-dollar Enzo Ferrari and multi-million dollar games company Gizmondo -- still held an executive position at MVNO Xero Mobile. We removed the comment from Joystiq because we could find no proof that it was true. However, in doing this research, we did turn up information about Xero Mobile's connection to Ericksson's now-defunct Gizmondo. The most reliable source we could find on the subject was the venerable Financial Times, which states that "Peter Lilley, who headed up Gizmondo's Smart Adds business unit, David Levett who was formerly chief software architect at Gizmondo, and Rich Clayton, US producer for Gizmondo, are involved in setting up a new company called Xero Mobile, based in Beverley Hills." Plenty of others (Sean Ryan, Om Malik, Moco News, The Inquirer, to name a few) have chimed in on the linkage between the companies, and have further noted the similarities between Gizmondo's "Smart Adds" technology and the business model of Xero Mobile, which will provide free cell phone service to users who are willing to watch or listen to advertisements in exchange for that service. In short, we could find no link between Ericksson and Xero Mobile, though ample linkages exist between Xero and Gizmondo, according to multiple sources, some of them quite reliable.
