9to5Mac told you about Gamestop’s plans to begin selling new iPhones, iPads, and iPods after recently beginning to accept the devices as trade-ins. Now, it appears that the company also has plans to drop a branded Android-powered tablet of their own.
In an interview with Games Industry, president of Gamestop Tony Bartel claimed the company is already testing the tablet that will apparently launch with a selection of pre-installed games and dedicated gaming controller accessory. Although, he isn’t disclosing who exactly will be manufacturing the tablet. The company also reportedly has plans to offer games over-the-air with a cloud service of sorts.
From the interview:
“We definitely have selected one…We’re in test phase right now. But we’re excited at the prospect of coming out with this tablet. I would call it a ‘GameStop certified gaming platform.’ We looked at all the tablets and these are the ones that really worked for gaming and we’re going to give you a few benefits that you’re not going to get elsewhere.”
It’s clear the company thinks the dedicated controller will be a huge advantage to getting hardcore gamers to adopt the platform:
“There’s not a lot of tablet/android based games for the consumer that are designed to use an external controller. There are a few games out there and more that are coming, but our thought is that the tablet is a great immersive gaming device so it’s hard for us to envision how that tablet will really function as such without some sort of controller… So we’ve created a controller…”
While at this point there is no word on pricing or availability, the fact the company has already selected a manufacturer to produce the “Gamestop certified gaming platform” marks a huge push into the mobile gaming world. It’s also an indication of the gaming industry’s willingness to accept tablets and other non-gaming dedicated mobile devices into their ecosystem.
We’ll keep you updated as we learn more…
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