A smartphone locked in a console?

What with the recession and the Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony machines with plenty of shelf life left no consoles are launching in 2009, right? Not so. Brazilian manufacturer Tectoy, most notable outside of South America for its long partnership with Sega and official distribution of its consoles in Brazil, will be releasing an entirely original product called Zeebo.

While that on its own is hardly staggering news what piqued my interest in this case is that the concept is centered around downloadable games distributed only over a 3G wireless network, with the console exclusively designed for emerging markets (Latin America/India/China). Looking at the specs it looks like a smartphone locked in a console box! It already has high-profile partners and games including Electronic Arts's FIFA, Id Software's Quake and Namco Bandai's Tekken. It will save its small, standard definition titles, many of which will initially be BREW mobile game ports, to the system's internal flash memory. This is intended to sidestep the issues of piracy, home internet availability and retail distribution of game titles.

The company is 57 percent owned by Tectoy and 43 percent owned by mobile tech company and BREW creator Qualcomm. As well as the above-mentioned larger companies who will release games for the console, Zeebo is hoping to attract independent developers as well. English info on the console is exceptionally rare so far, with no launch yet slated for North America. But there is opportunity here; the firm feels there's potential for a repeat of the indie-led App Store boom Apple is currently seeing with iPhone.