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GameStick Kickstarter Consoles Delayed To June
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."
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.
Most Damage is done by people who are AWAKE
You can already hook up many existing tablets or other Android devices to HDMI and see games on your television.
Well, it's usually the "I have to crawl in there and start fiddling with cables" that puts people off such; the average consumer does not like cables or playing with them. Even I hate those things with a passion and I'm a geek.
They'll probably be used mostly to run emulators and media players on a TV
Is there something wrong with such usage, though? A small, completely-silent little box tucked away that can play all the tens of thousands of games of the past, all at your perusal with just a push of a power button and a few menu-items. I can definitely see the appeal.
--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).
There is a resolution-advantage, however, as Android-devices can sport 1080p graphics both in games and in videos. Some Android-devices can do stereoscopic-3D, too, if your TV-set supports it. Also, all these Android-boxes consume less power than even a Nintendo Wii, so they make sense for families with lots of users that'll keep the thing going for days on end, or for the people who have this or that need to conserve some energy. Oh, and well, on families with lots of young, active children it might even be more cost-efficient to buy a cheap ~$50 box than one of the more powerful once -- if it gets broken it won't cost much to replace the thing!
You don't have to agree with me or give these things the same value as I see in them, but the truth is that there are bound to be some people out there who would benefit from using these kinds of devices.
>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.