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Gizmondo relaunch slips to late 2008

Freer admits being over-optimistic.

Gizmondo boss Carl Freer has admitted that maybe he was a little over optimistic when he promised to relaunch the fabled handheld this May.

His fresh and rather more sober prediction is the end of 2008, according to Swedish site Realtid.se (translated by GameSpot). But he wants us to know it's definitely still coming.

The Gizmondo was originally released back in 2005, but sold abysmally and racked up enormous debts that resulted in bankruptcy a year later.

It was more famous for its executives crashing Ferraris and throwing lavish parties than it was for being a successful gadget.

The Gizmondo featured a GPS, a 0.3 Megapixel camera, a music and video player, some rubbish games, and could send text or mixed-media messages. It couldn't do phone calls, though.

It cost GBP 229.99, a figure you could knock down to GBP 129.99 if you wanted "Smart Ads": up to three adverts shown to you a day.

However, none of this is the reason why it failed to grab our attention. No, it simply "wasn't fully brought into the market", according to new owner Plextek.

We're confident it will fair much better this time around, especially with the PSP taking on many of its functions as well as the new stable of mobile phones.