Dingoo-Digital provides further information about the A320!

Most impressively, within 24 hours of asking Dingoo-Digital’s representative over at the A320 free forums some follow up questions from our original Dingoo Digital Interview, Sofia has provided even more information on the Dingoo and Dingoo’s future plans.

The following is reproduced from the A320 freeforums. These were my follow up questions:

Hello, Sofia, it is wonderful to see a Dingoo representative here.
Today, Jim from Dingoo-Digital answered some questions for me at www.dingoo-scene.blogspot.com about the Dingoo A320. [url]His answers are here http://dingoo-scene.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... rview.html[/url]
Jim was very helpful, and it was exciting to hear from Dingoo itself! His answers raised even more questions for us, which I hope you can help to answer.
We asked Jim:
"Will more emulators will be made for Dingoo(for example, C64, MAME, PCEngine?)
For A320 , will not make more emulators.
For other new product , maybe we could provide more emulators , such as psp emulator ."
. It sounds from Jim's answer that Dingoo is unlikely to make more emulators for the A320, but may make more emulators for "other new products." Does this mean that a new hardware model of the Dingoo is planned to be released?
. PSP emulation would be fantastic, but it would require very powerful hardware! Does this mean that a new model will be much faster than the A320?
. Finally, can we help to convince Dingoo to please release more emulators for the A320? With a 400Mhz chip, the Dingoo is fast enough to emulate most systems, like MAME, the Nintendo 64, Master System, MSX, C64, PC Engine, Amiga and the Apple II!
But even if it may not be possible to make so many new emulators, MAME would help Dingoo sell many more units! Of all the emulators available, I think MAME is the emulator which all retro gamers enjoy the most.
. Can we please ask Dingoo to at least make a version of MAME for the Dingoo?
. What operating system does the dingoo A320 run? These details may help hobbyists to release ports of other emulators, even if Dingoo cannot.
. I don't know how to port emulators to different hardware platforms. However, if someone in these forums does, could they please let Sofia know what other information would be helpful for fans to do the porting themselves?
Also:
. According to this website: http://dingoo888.manufacturer.globalsou ... 53/OEM.htm your company is an OEM hardware manufacturer. We also know you are a maker of 3dgames for mobile platforms. Is Dingoo mainly a games company, or a hardware manufacturing company?
. Are both sites, dingoogames and dingoo888 controlled by the same company?
. When might the virus problems on the English Dingoo888 website be fixed? (Jim said Dingoo was working on it)
. How many Dingoo A320s have you sold in China, and in the world to date?
. Many people would like to download the SDK from http://soft3d.org/ , but it very hard for non-chinese speaking people to log-in, and to find the files. Dingoo-scene.blogspot.com , or I am sure, these forums, would be very happy to host copies of the SDK on our server, if you could help us to get the SDK. Can you help?
To help Dingoo see how many potential overseas customers exist, and how many more would exist if technical support continues, I have started a campaign to collect market survey information on how many people want a Dingoo here: http://dingoo-scene.blogspot.com/2009/03/save-dingoo-a320.html Please come by and check the results from time to time! I encourage all of you who read these forums to please take part in the Market Survey at the link.
Sofia, thanks so much for coming to these forums, and we look forward to dealing with you and helping you make a fantastic product for us fans to buy and buy!
Regards
Larry

And these were Sofia’s answers:

Hello Larry,
Good day there!
It was really glad to see that you seems have much interesting on our Dingoo A320 machine, I apprecaite that as a staff of Dingoo.
Firstly, Jim is my colleague in Dingoo, he joined this company for a long time. Some times he is my teacher. So, he is more professional than me for this moment.
Well, you asked many questions, and I’d like to choose some ones to answer since I need to negotiate business with my clients who are online and reply their mails, hope you can understand this.

Q: It sounds …Does this mean that a new hardware model of the Dingoo is planned to be released?
A: Not yet planned but will be plan. This is trend.

Q: Finally, can we help to convince Dingoo to please release more emulators for the A320?
A：For now, maybe can not. But we will keep our device be improved.

Q: Can we please ask Dingoo to at least make a version of MAME for the Dingoo?
A: I can not give you an correct answer on this. However, I already reported your advice to our Engineer team. Once I get an answer will let all of you know.

Q: What operating system does the dingoo A320 run?
A: Sorry for that I can not tell you, hope you can understand this is our commercial secret.

Q: According to this website: http://dingoo888.manufacturer.globalsou ... 53/OEM.htm your company is an OEM hardware manufacturer. We also know you are a maker of 3dgames for mobile platforms. Is Dingoo mainly a games company, or a hardware manufacturing company?
. Are both sites, dingoogames and dingoo888 controlled by the same company?
A: We all belongs to the same company. Just dingoogames is engaged in developing the games and platforms, dingoo digital product（which I am working in, the website is www.dingoo888.com and http://dingoo888.manufacturer.globalsou ... 53/OEM.htm）is a company producing and selling game consoles which based on the support of Dingoo games. Hope this time you can be more clear now.

Q: . When might the virus problems on the English Dingoo888 website be fixed? (Jim said Dingoo was working on it)
A: We will concentrate on fixing it and make it recover asap as Jim told you. You know, many hackers we consider who are assigned by our competitors will never give up to harm it perhaps.

Q: How many Dingoo A320s have you sold in China, and in the world to date?
A: Hmm, it is business secret in some sense. Just can tell you we are the strongest comepititor of Sony PSP in China and our montly production is 30K pcs and will surely increase in future.

Q: . Many people would like to download the SDK from http://soft3d.org/ , but it very hard for non-chinese speaking people to log-in, and to find the files. Dingoo-scene.blogspot.com , or I am sure, these forums, would be very happy to host copies of the SDK on our server, if you could help us to get the SDK. Can you help?
A: Well , this is really a problem as we all realized it already. And, our company will try to work out some other places for down loading the SDK. Of course we will make it in English language as well. And for now, we only responsible to help the clients who brought the machine directly from our company to get the SDK in the way they told us which ones they wanted in English and we sent the links to them. So sorry for other fans !

Finally, I thank you for all our our Dingoo fans’ supports! And wish to work with all of you to explore the international potential market! Thanks Larry again !

Sofia

I can understand, and completely respect, Dingoo’s position on the need to manage and protect their trade secrets. The last thing we want to do is to affect the viability of the product for the company which bests understands it, and who is best placed to support it.

I believe that anyone who is concerned about future support for this product can take a lot of comfort this this is a company which cares about its product, and which is trying to listen to fans of the Dingoo A320. This dialogue is very healthy, and instantly, in my opinion, puts Dingoo-Digital streaks ahead of the countless number of other PMP/console makers which exist in China.

Dingoo have released a product which deserves to succeed on its merits, because it has a highly competitive feature set for its price. Ultimately however, for fans of products like these, it is only ongoing development and support which will turn it from being “just another forgotten Chinese clone” into something which will stand the test of time.

I am very pleased from the communication we have had over the last few days that there are people behind the product who are listening and working on the very issues which have been the subject of so much forum discussion. Anyone holding off on buying one because they fear ongoing support and development may be non-existent can now, I think, put this thinking to rest.

Thank you to both Jim, Sofia and Dingoo-Digital, and we look forward to continuing helpful dialogue, and to the ongoing success of this product in the future!