Gizmondo console: why it failed and the Ferrari crash

Gizmondo is a handheld game console that went on sale in the UK on March 19, 2005 and in the US on October 22, 2005. Gizmondo Europe Ltd, a subsidiary of Tiger Telematics, developed it and put it on sale. It ran Windows CE with a GPS receiver and a GPRS modem built in. The company went into administration in January 2006. A few weeks later one of its directors wrecked a Ferrari Enzo on the Pacific Coast Highway at 162 miles an hour.

Gizmondo began as a GPS tracker for children

The console started as a child tracker called Gametraq. The idea came after the 2002 Soham murders in England, when its founder Carl Freer looked into a GPS locator for kids. The team proposed a gaming interface to make it more fun.

Freer had started a small electronics distributor in Sweden in 2000. In 2002 it merged with Floor Décor, a carpet retailer in Jacksonville, Florida, and renamed itself Tiger Telematics. Tiger published its first plans for the device in October 2003 in response to Nokia's N-Gage. The device appeared at CES in January 2004, took the name Gizmondo around April 2004 and went to E3 that year. The case came from Dickinson Associates, the firm of Rick Dickinson, who had designed the ZX81 and the rubber keyboard of the ZX Spectrum for Sinclair.

The flagship showroom on London's Regent Street leased for £175,000 a year. Sting reportedly played the launch party at the Park Lane Hotel. A canary yellow Formula One car that cost $6 million stood in the glass-walled lobby of the company's headquarters near Farnborough. Jordan, the Formula One team, sued for nearly $3 million in unpaid sponsorship.

Stefan Eriksson was hired to make "strategic introductions" to racing contacts. His 2004 pay was a £1.1 million salary, £145,000 in bonuses and a £5,000 monthly car allowance. A Swedish investigator said Freer "could sell sand in the Sahara and refrigerators to Eskimos."

What the Gizmondo console was and what it cost

Inside was a Samsung ARM9 processor at 400 MHz, 64 MB of RAM, a 2.8-inch screen at 320 by 240 and an Nvidia GoForce 4500 graphics chip. It also had Bluetooth for multiplayer, a camera and an SD card slot.

The UK price was £229 with a remake of Trailblazer in the box. A cheaper version called Smart Adds followed in April 2005 at £129 in the UK and $229 in the US. It was meant to show full-screen ads, but the ad service never launched. The plan was up to three ads a day, downloaded over GPRS, some with vouchers and some using GPS to point the owner at a nearby store. To me the ad plan shows the device was still a tracking product with games attached. Smart Adds buyers got the full console for £100 less. The US model cost $400 and was sold only through mall kiosks. The Nintendo DS launched at $149 and the PSP at $249.

Fourteen games came out, among them Trailblazer, Sticky Balls, Richard Burns Rally and SSX 3. About 30 more were canceled, including Colors, a GPS game, and Chicane, a Jenson Button racer. Only 8 of the 14 reached the US.

Why the Gizmondo failed

The company claimed 500,000 pre-orders, but fewer than 25,000 consoles sold worldwide. The UK store sold roughly 1,000 on launch day, and the US launch opened with about a dozen kiosks. US sales figures were never officially released. GamePro called it the worst-selling handheld in history, and GameTrailers later named it the worst console of all time.

In September 2005, weeks before the US launch, Tiger confirmed a 2006 redesign. It had a 4-inch widescreen at 480 by 272, Wi-Fi, a 500 MHz processor and GSM voice calls, and it was promised for CES 2006. Buyers put off purchases. The new model never appeared at CES or anywhere else. I think the early announcement hurt sales more than the price did.

Tiger lost $99.29 million in 2004 and $210 million in the first nine months of 2005. Internal figures showed sales of £1.4 million over those nine months and losses of about £500,000 a day.

Freer, Eriksson, Peter Uf and Johan Enander all resigned on October 20, 2005, ahead of an Aftonbladet article on the executives' criminal records that ran on October 24. Gizmondo Europe was declared bankrupt on January 23, 2006 and liquidated in February. The debt was about $300 million.

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The director with a criminal record and a Ferrari Enzo

Eriksson had led the Uppsala Mafia in the early 1990s. He had convictions for cocaine and arms offenses in 1988 and later a fraud case over an attempt to cheat a Swedish bank of 22 million kronor.

Around 6 a.m. on February 21, 2006, his red Enzo hit a power pole outside Malibu. Reconstruction put the speed at 162 mph. The car broke in two behind the cabin, the halves lay about 600 feet apart and debris covered 1,200 feet of road. Ferrari built 498 Enzos. A police officer at the scene said: "For a million dollars, you get a pretty good air bag system."

Eriksson told police he was a passenger and that a German acquaintance named Dietrich had been driving. Police searched for Dietrich for three hours with a helicopter. DNA from the driver-side airbag was Eriksson's, and he later admitted Dietrich did not exist.

The Enzo, a second Ferrari and three Mercedes models were five cars worth $10.8 million, leased in Britain. The lease payments had stopped. Eriksson was arrested in April 2006. His November trial ended in a mistrial. The jury had split 10 to 2 toward conviction. He then took a plea: guilty to two counts of embezzlement and one of illegal gun possession, three years and deportation. He was released in January 2008. In Sweden he received 18 months for extortion and aggravated assault.

The wrecked Enzo went back to the Ferrari factory and was rebuilt around its original monocoque and engine. RM Sotheby's sold it in Paris in February 2016.

Gizmondo prices and what came after

Freer announced a new Gizmondo in November 2007 with 35 games and a hoped-for price of $99. The launch slipped from May 2008 to November 2008, and the latest prototype was a smartphone that never shipped.

On October 23, 2026, PriceCharting listed a loose unit at about $540 and a complete one at $1,500, with roughly one sale a year. A console listed as having no ads sold for $1,500 on eBay in March 2026.

Questions people ask

Why did the Gizmondo fail?

It cost $400 in the US against a $249 PSP and had only 8 games there. Tiger also announced a redesign weeks before the US launch. In the first nine months of 2005 Tiger lost $210 million. One of its directors, Stefan Eriksson, had convictions for cocaine and arms offenses.

How many Gizmondos were sold?

Fewer than 25,000 worldwide. No official US figure was released.

What was the Gizmondo?

A Windows CE handheld console from Gizmondo Europe, a Tiger Telematics subsidiary, with built-in GPS and GPRS. It began as a child-tracking idea and launched in the UK in March 2005.

What games came out on the Gizmondo?

Fourteen: Classic Compendium, Classic Compendium 2, Fathammer Classics Pack, FIFA 2005, Gizmondo Motocross 2005, Hockey Rage 2005, Interstellar Flames 2, Pocket Ping Pong 2005, Point of Destruction, Richard Burns Rally, SSX 3, Sticky Balls, Toy Golf and Trailblazer. The canceled list included Age of Empires and Carmageddon.

How much is a Gizmondo worth today?

A working console with its original battery sold on eBay for $560 in February 2026, and another sold in March for $1,500.