Panasonic Turns To Regular Consumers To Playtest Jungle

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This may well be one of the strangest developments that I’ve heard out of portable gaming in a while–the folks out at Panasonic are still trying to get their Jungle device out into the market, and as such, they’re looking to get some playtesting done with it. And who are they looking to get playtesting? Regular consumers.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard much of anything about the Jungle device, and this seems to be largely because there hasn’t been much to talk about with the Jungle. But the word appears to be from multiple sources that Panasonic is inviting regular folks to get their hands on the Jungle and see how it works for them.  They’re not releasing any details about how the selection process was set up, or why they went with regular people instead of, say, tech experts like us, but that’s the process they’re using.

There’s still no word on when the device will actually hit shelves–though it definitely seems like they want to get it there, especially if they’re bothering to go through playtesting and suchlike. But here’s the thing–this is going to be a tough sell for Panasonic, and for the most part, Panasonic seems to be well aware that its position is somewhere behind the eight ball. How can I tell? They said this:

“We know other companies out there have traditional handheld gaming covered. We’re doing something very different.”

Though what they’re doing doesn’t really seem to be that different–they’re looking to go to a portable game system that can handle MMOs via Wi-Fi connection–they certainly are going about their testing in a different fashion from the norm. And Panasonic’s going to have to convince people that their system is better than, say, a dedicated gaming system like the DSi or the PSP, or that it’ll do so much better on gaming than a smartphone that they don’t need to make calls on the Jungle or even that the Jungle is better than the supreme utility of a laptop.

How it all ends up remains to be seen–they haven’t even hit shelves yet–but I don’t look for this one to end well.