GameStick Kickstarter Consoles Delayed To June 57
hypnosec writes "Developer units of Android based gaming console on-a-stick GameStick have already been shipped but, the units meant for early Kickstarter backers have been delayed by two months and will now ship by late June, PlayJam has revealed. The reason, according to PlayJam, is that the consoles would require stronger tooling as compared to silicon based moulds of the dev consoles, which would be finished sometime by June 10. Further, because of the sheer increase in the number of units, PlayJam has said that it won't be able to afford the air freight and will be going for sea freight instead, which will delay the shipments to June."
Re:Stronger tooling? (Score:4, Informative)
>consoles would require stronger tooling as compared to silicon based moulds
It already takes quite a lot of effort to cut through silicon. What are they making the consoles out of, battleship armor?
It isn't about what the consoles are made of, the issue is the silicon molds wouldn't survive the higher production volume and the new higher end tooling takes longer to procure.
Controller (Score:3, Interesting)
The two analog sticks aren't even aligned vertically... what's up with that?
Re:Controller (Score:4, Informative)
The only consoles I can think of that have vertical aligned analogue sticks are Sony PlayStation* controllers. For this reason I have never felt completely comfortable with them. I guess it's what your used to but having gone Nintendo > MS on consoles, which probably explains it. My favorite controller ever was the original Gamecube one slightly small, but for games designed with it in mind second to non.
As far as controllers go I have never thought Sony really knew what they where doing the the shoulder buttons never seemed to be in the correct place and I prefer the asymmetric analogue stick layout - the later is training though.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Controller (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone knows the best controller is that of the Gamecube. The Dreamcast wasn't bad either, and the Xbox360 is pretty good as well.
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I'm amazed that this is such a polarizing issue
As I have already stated that I prefer the asymmetric design, this is almost certainly due to what I'm used to. I would not criticize if someone prefers an alternative. I would pull them up if they say my preference is wrong though.
I think this comes down to the fact that modern games have 2 different controls set ups. Either 1 analogue stick and the action buttons or 2 analogue sticks, so maybe we need 2 controllers for these two situations, one with the NGC/
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It looks like it's set up to be used either Joystick & ABXY or D-Pad & Joystick. Why would they line up the joysticks? It only would make sense for games you would play with joystick & joystick (a la Robotron: 2084) which would seem to be in the minority.
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The two analog sticks aren't even aligned vertically... what's up with that?
The Xbox 360 controllers do not have vertically aligned analog sticks either.
GameStick delayed (Score:1)
is GameStick denied
no air freight? (Score:1)
That explanation makes no sense whatsoever. The total cost goes up, sure, but does the per unit cost go up? They're paid per unit. More units means more revenue. More units should also give a better economy of scale. Sounds like their cost estimates were way off and they're trying to reduce expenses wherever they can.
So why are they lying about it? What else are they lying about?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. If the units cost $100, and that included air freight, with let's say $20 going towards air freight, then whether they have 1000 or 100,000, there's still $20 going towards air freight, and generally a larger volume saves you money. If it's still cheaper to do them in 1000 unit shipments, then do them in 1000 unit shipments.
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What else are they lying about?
For one thing, the intelligence of the idiot they hired to come up with the lies...
I still don't get it. (Score:4, Informative)
Why is everyone going gaga over Android consoles? You can already hook up many existing tablets or other Android devices to HDMI and see games on your television. These new Android consoles are unlikely to get lots of games specific to just that console, so they will mostly run ordinary Android apps. They'll probably be used mostly to run emulators and media players on a TV--except that you can jailbreak a Wii to get that and the processing power of Android game consoles is weak enough that they have no advantage over a Wii for emulators (and only an advantage for media players because they have hardware decoding).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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you could have bought android consoles to attach to your tv with hdmi for few years already though.
what's changed is marketing.. and bundling a game controller.
they're for nerds who don't have a computer hooked up to the bigscreen.
Re: (Score:2)
What? The number of cables it takes to attach a tablet with an HDMI port to a TV is one. If one cable causes people trouble, I don't understand how they can handle their PS3 and Wii.
And a more basic problem with this argument is that the main audience for these devices is geeks, who don't have problems with attaching cables, using wireless controllers, or any of the other things that are supposed disa
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i have no intention of buying one, but the use case is a $99 console and a cheap phone. if you are outside the USA where phones cost real money then this sounds like a good deal
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A console capable of 1080p output, has low-cost casual games, and doesn't require an always-on connection. Don't talk to me about graphics unless they're truly crap, because for me it's gameplay that matters. I have a PS3, but am done with Sony entirely. Nor will I be buying a new Xbox or a Wii U. The major console makers have taken enough of my money, and now they want to control when and what I can play - always-online and no used games. I'll be buying an Ouya as well as a GameStick, and I'll be buying my
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Why not put together a gaming PC?
For $100?
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This still doesn't fix the biggest problem with android games: lack of a proper controller.
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Why is everyone going gaga over Android consoles? You can already hook up many existing tablets or other Android devices to HDMI and see games on your television. These new Android consoles are unlikely to get lots of games specific to just that console, so they will mostly run ordinary Android apps. They'll probably be used mostly to run emulators and media players on a TV--except that you can jailbreak a Wii to get that and the processing power of Android game consoles is weak enough that they have no advantage over a Wii for emulators (and only an advantage for media players because they have hardware decoding).
What if you don't have any android devices, ie, tablets or smartphones? Wait, the world evolves around you, right?
more units more money? (Score:3, Insightful)
because of the sheer increase in the number of units, PlayJam has said that it won't be able to afford the air freight and will be going for sea freight instead
Increased number of units would increase revenue proportionately, decrease production costs and keep shipping costs constant, or reduce them (on a per unit basis)
So, this doesnt make sense
From reading more... (Score:1)
It appears they've made deals with several retailers (ie GameStop) and are trying to produce/ship all orders at once, including Kickstarter, allowing them to lower costs on all orders and maximize their profits. From a general accounting perspective, that makes sense, but from a public relations standpoint, it's terrible. They're basically doing the major retailer orders on the backs of the Kickstarter early backers, and not giving them any real reward. It sounds like backers may not even get this much p
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But they explicitly told people how they planned to schedule/manufacture/ship these products, and people invested based on that. Now they've changed their plans while making flimsy excuses about why it's more expensive and taking longer.
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If they are shipping from overseas (I'm assuming since the alternative is sending by boat), you run into customs and logistics issues. There are all sorts of crazy limitations, duties, paperwork and other overhead when transporting commercial goods by air that are minimized when you send by sea. For example there are seemingly arbitrary container requirements for shipping certain item
It doesn't add up... (Score:2)
If you look at the summary, it seems like both the retooling and sea shipping would push the delivery date to June, so adding those two up, wouldn't it push the ETA even further?
Actually, the paritynews.com article says:
Following the mechanical tooling, which is expected to finish by second week of June, the units will be assembled, tested and then packed. PlayJam notes that because of the sheer increase in the number of units, it won’t be able to afford the air freight and it will be going for sea b
Re: (Score:2)
Initially we had hoped to deliver GameStick to you at the end of April. We now expect to complete mechanical tooling about 4 weeks later at the end of May. Then the units are assembled, tested and assuming there are no issues, packed prior to shipping to each territory. We expect to ship around the 10th June. The volumes are now too large for us to be able to afford to air-freight them, which was our plan, so now we are going to have to use sea freight to deliver them. That's going to take around 2 weeks. Then we have fulfillment in territory – which we estimate will take between 1 and 5 days depending on where you are located. This means we think the likely date of arrival of your hand crafted GameStick will be at the last week of June.
From the horse's mouth (Score:4, Informative)
Huge Momentum.
When we started this project we were unsure how successful it would be. Our expectation was that we would do an initial run of a few thousand units and then go from there. What happened next was a whirlwind. We’ve now got 27 retailers around the world engaged and placing orders for our micro-console. We have GameStop in the US and Game in the UK as our lead retail partners, but with over 5,000 stores between them we are in a remarkable position to scale this project.
With your support and backing we have created something that quite literally could help re-shape the games console industry. Quite a feat if we get it right.
Dev units shipped.
Key to making this happen is getting developers behind us and so far over 600 developers have signed up, including many great indies and major studios. We’re working on bringing some great titles to the TV and over the coming months we will make some announcements on some of the awesome exclusive content we have in development. We’ve also signed strategic deals with companies like Amlogic and ARM which will help us promote our network throughout their huge eco-system. To harness this potential we have started shipping out the GameStick DEV units to our developer partners and will ship out the remaining units this week and next. One batch has been held up in customs because of the current issues around the use of air-freight to transport lithium batteries which exist within our controller. Hopefully this batch will be released next week.
Using your feedback on these units we have already begun to make refinements on the final production model. We have adjusted the movement on the shoulder buttons, changed the analog stick assembly, moved the LED configuration, re-designed some of the buttons, changed the texture on the analog stick hats and put a mechanical door on the back of the controller so that when GameStick is being used the slot in the back of the controller is closed. We’re looking forward to getting further feedback from you all.
Main Production Run.
The main production run has gone from a few thousand units to tens of thousands of units. This has meant that we have had to change production methods and move to high volume tooling.
Initially, we planned on demand for around 1,000 units so we were going to use silicon molds, which is what we have used for the GameStick DEV units. These don’t take much time to make, but they also cannot cope with the high volume production that we now need. As a result we have had to move to much higher end tooling which is being made in both China and Germany. To create these tools takes around 3 months and is a huge investment for us – one we can only afford to make once. Whilst this work has been underway for a while we have had to slow things down a bit to ensure we can get the final controller amendments prototyped and tested before the final tools can be finished.
Initially we had hoped to deliver GameStick to you at the end of April. We now expect to complete mechanical tooling about 4 weeks later at the end of May. Then the units are assembled, tested and assuming there are no issues, packed prior to shipping to each territory. We expect to ship around the 10th June. The volumes are now too large for us to be able to afford to air-freight them, which was our plan, so now we are going to have to use sea freight to deliver them. That's going to take around 2 weeks. Then we have fulfillment in territory – which we estimate will take between 1 and 5 days depending on where you are located. This means we think the likely date of arrival of your hand crafted GameStick will be at the last week of June.
Whilst we would have liked to ship earlier, we are, to a large degree, victims of the success we have created toge