GameStick, a would-be OUYA competitor that we wrote about back in January when it launched its Kickstarter campaign, has been delayed. The device achieved backing on Kickstarter in February and originally planned to start shipping in March, with “fulfilment to customer” pegged for April. But the launch has now been delayed until June — with the project creators saying it’s been a victim “of the success we have created”.
Close to $650,000 was pledged via Kickstarter by almost 5,700 backers — more than 6x more money than the GameStick’s creators original goal of $100,000. When funding hit $560,000 they added a stretch goal introducing one more console colour to the mix, and giving backers the option to vote on a fourth colour choice via Facebook.
In an update to backers, the GameStick creators pointed to greater than expected production volumes as the reason for the three month delay, along with switching from air freight to sea shipping to keep costs down. “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,” the message said.
The first backers are not expected to receive their GameSticks until the last week in June.
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.
The GameStick is so named for its USB stick design, which means the console is even smaller than the cube-shaped OUYA. The GameStick controller has a space to fit the console inside for safe keeping when it’s being carried in a bag or pocket.
As for internal hardware, the GameStick has a dual-core Cortex A9 chip clocked at 1.5GHz, along with a dual-core Mali 400 GPU at 400MHz, plus 1GB of memory and 8GB of flash storage. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi for connectivity and runs Android Jelly Bean. Gamepads, mice and keyboards can be hooked up to it — with support for up to four controllers at once.
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