GameStick turned quite a few heads by meeting its $100K Kickstarter goal six times over. Back in February, PlayJam, the company behind GameStick, announced that the console was officially up for pre-order and set to ship in April. Unfortunately, it seems the company has had to revise that ship date by almost two months.
In a statement posted to its Kickstarter pager, PlayJam said the delay was a result of high demand for the miniature console. The company said high demand has necessitated a change in the way the units themselves are produced. Putting this change in place will take three months. The process is underway, but the company won't be shipping its main production run this month.
"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," said PlayJam.
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."
PlayJam goes on to say that the creation of these tools takes three months and is an expensive investment. The work has been underway for a while but the company has had to slow things down to "ensure we can get the final controller amendments prototyped and tested before the final tools can be finished."
Right now, the company is looking to finish mechanical tooling at the end of May, after which the units will be assembled, tested, and packed for shipping. They'll ship around June 10 via sea. From the time the units ship, they'll take a little less three weeks to get to customers, which will put the delivery date at the end of June. Hopefully there won't be any delays after that.
GameStick allows for a compact, no-fuss gaming experience using a TV equipped with a HDMI connection. PlayJam is selling the GameStick plus a controller for $79.99. The dock will set you back $24.99, while the GameStick case is going for $9.99.Pre-orders are being taken through www.gamestick.tv. Just don't expect to get it before school is out.
