Commodore Introduces New Portable Game, Product Line at CES

Commodore International, the recently-revived brand known for its game-compatible computers such as the C64 and the Amiga, showed off its first new slate of products at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including a handheld device capable of playing games. The company, bought by Yeahronimo Media Ventures from Tulip Computers in January 2005, debuted the Commodore Multimedia Tower, The Commodore MediaBox, and the Commodore Navigator Combo at this week's show. The Navigator Combo is an upgradable handheld device with GPS functions that also plays games, music and video files. The Combo runs on the Windows CE platform, and contains a 20GB internal hard drive for storing media. Some of that media apparently includes games; the Combo will ship with 5 game titles pre-loaded, and 90 more available for download from Commodore's site, according to a report on UK site The Inquirer. The Multimedia Tower is meant for business and retail use, rather than personal home use, and allows visitors to wirelessly download various types of media from music to ringtones to games from the Multimedia Tower server. The system has an integrated credit card reader for payment, and is compatible with many types of mobile phones and MP3 players. Finally, the MediaBox has no game functions but serves as a TiVo-like device that can record TV programs on its 80GB hard drive, as well as display downloaded music, videos, and photos. "We are excited to be launching our initial offerings at this year’s CES," stated Commodore president and CEO Ben van Wijhe. "We expect our Tower, MediaBox and Navigator to both advance and uphold the world-class quality of yesteryear’s Commodore products. Never before has a brand come out of hibernation and truly reinvented itself to position competitively in an ever-evolving digital media marketplace."