ZRRO Android Console Challenges The Status Quo With zTouch

By this time, the concept of playing Android games on the big screen is no longer a novel idea, but there doesn't seem to be a clear winner just yet. And neither has it caught on even with hardcore Android gamers. ZRRO, a new Android console vying for your attention and your support, thinks it knows the reason why. Almost all of these force Android developers to create or retrofit their games to their controllers. ZRRO's solution? A controller that lets you "Touch the TV screen from the couch without looking at the controller."

In fact, you could probably say that the highlight of the ZRRO (pronounced as "zero") Android gaming console isn't the console itself but the controller. Unimaginatively called the ZRRO Pad, it's immediately obvious that it is not your average game controller. In fact, it's more like a multi-touch touchpad that happens to use ZRRO's fancy "zTouch" technology. The name probably comes from the fact that you can operate the controller even on the z-axis, meaning it can detect your fingers even if they are hovering above the controller, up to 1.3 inches high to be exact.

Might as well use the smartphone as a controller, you might think. Well, there are key differences. The first is that the controller doesn't mirror the display, so there's little temptation to look down and just play on the thing instead, which negates the point of playing on a big screen in the first place. But more than that, ZRRO actually displays touch indicators on the screen where your fingers are, giving you a visual hint and saving you from having guess where they are. The indicators even show how high above the controller your fingers are.

What this means in practice is that you can swipe, pinch, touch, with one finger, two fingers, all fingers, to your heart's content without having to look down. This also means that developers would need not have to worry about adding support for controllers and joysticks to their games just to be playable with ZRRO. Games can be played the way they were designed, just on a bigger screen. Gamers will no longer have to be limited to a smaller collection of titles that have been certified to support a certain console. The whole world of Android gaming is yours to get. It also means you can use ZRRO for more than just games, basically anything you'd use your Android smartphone or tablet for..

Compared to that, the ZRRO Box itself sounds almost unexciting, but it is quite capable as an Android machine. It is powered by an unnamed 2.0 GHz quad-core processor and has 2 GB of DDR3 RAM. Internal storage is at 16 GB but you can add 32 GB more via a microSD card. It has Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity and its video output can support up to 4K resolutions. Whether games will gracefully scale up to that size is a different matter.

Sadly, ZRRO hast just begun its Kickstarter campaign, with a $200,000 goal in mind and a September 2015 shipping date. For an early bird pledge of $149 you get one ZRRO Box and Pad combo, with $199 being the regular Kickstarter price. Those who have been bitten by OUYA before might very well be wary of this new promise, but, admittedly, the idea is an interesting one to follow.

SOURCE: ZRRO, Kickstarter