Jio has expanded its footprint into a lot of new product and service categories over the last few years, but today, we might have just spotted its most surprising foray yet — gaming consoles.
Jio has been a true tech disruptor in segments such as telecom, entertainment, fiber, messaging, payments and more. It even has a line of hardware products such as feature phones, and will soon be expanding to smartphones. A common theme till now has been entering crowded segments with offerings that undercut the competition. That might be changing soon.
Tipster Mukul Sharma aka Stufflistings just spotted a hardware product from Jio on the Bureau of Indian Standards website certified for launch in India. It has the model number “JGC100” and was filed under the “electronic games (video)” category, with a description that reads “handheld games”.
There’s not a lot of information to reach a conclusion, but Jio isn’t a common sighting on the BIS (barring batteries and phones), which makes this a substantial leak. ‘JGC’ could be the internal name for a “Jio gaming console” while the ‘100’ could signify the first product in the series.
India is not a very mature market for gaming consoles, especially handheld ones. In fact, the Nintendo Switch, which is considered to be the best handheld gaming console, is not even sold in the country. An entry into this segment would be a surprising one as Jio isn’t known to chase niche segments.
Apart from the price sensitivity of the market, another reason why gaming consoles usually take longer to mature is that the entire ecosystem has to move together. There have to be enough developers to create games for a platform to lure customers, and there has to be a big enough market for game studios to find it viably. If it is indeed a Jio gaming console, figuring out a solution to this catch-22 situation would be one of the biggest challenges for Jio.
Apart from the model number, there’s no real information available about the supposed Jio gaming console, so we’d suggest not holding your breath over this. Jio’s previous hardware announcements such as AR glasses are yet to be seen too, even after more than a year since the announcement. Maybe we will get a better understanding of the gaming platform at the JioPhone Next launch in September.
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