Disappointed Again

[Jourdy288]

I was thinking, could this kind of advancement model be applied to a game? I'm thinking about an RPG (snes-style) where you start your quest, which at first looks short (the first date set for the preorders to be delivered), but then these mandatory sidequests keep popping up, so actually finishing the original quest would take a lot longer than expected. Every time you think it's just going through this area, getting to the end boss and finishing the quest, you always need to do something else. The quest actually could start looking like a minor task just to add to the effect. Could it be possible to capture the "two months"-feeling (and later in the game, the "two weeks"-feeling) to a game like this?

EDIT: Think something in the lines of "take this sword to the king", but it takes the whole game to do so.

That's actually a great idea! I'd love to help you put it together! I'm quite busy, ATM, but perhaps with the aid of a simple RPG maker we could make one! I think that's ingenious. 10+. Any ideas of a simple GUI RPG maker? LOL, why does this sound familiar?

Oh, and I'm not going to panic, delays are certain. Bigger companies experience them too, although we just don't really hear about it. The Pandora will not be Indreama. It will be Pandora. These delays are simply a series of unfortunate events, nothing more. Unless Craig got himself cursed somehow

 

[noisome]

If the Pandora would be made by IBM, Dell, Apple or any other 'big box' company then I would definitely be p*ssed and accuse them of serious bad communication skills, just because those have vast resources and heaps of people who are payed $$ because they are supposed to know this kind of stuff and have their contacts because they do this stuff on "daily basis". If apple launches a product and gives a sell date then you expect this to be correct (and even they fail)

Just to let you know, IBM has plenty of people paying for products before they are even created. Now, for having over 10,000 employees in one city, not including the world, let me put this into perspective.

1. Some companies (Intel, Cisco, AMD, for example) pay in advance for future said product (server) stating 2 years they will receive their product.
2. IBM begins work.
3. A year to a year and a half later after hundreds or thousands of people develop this server from the ground up, mass production begins within their company.
4. Marketing begins as mass production runs for other sales.
5. Everyone gets a product at the same time.

Now, for OpenPandora:

1. Users (investors from here out) pay in advance for future said product (Pandora).
2. OpenPandora crew begins work.
3. Communication with investors begin detailing progress.
3a. Financial delays due to retarded banks.
3b. Robbed blindly from retarded company for nub designing and manufacturing.
3c. Chinese delays
3d. Chinese delay a year later, same time.
4. A year later, after 6 people have worked hard to design their product, mass production begins.
5. Since no in-house production team is available, outside production is necessary and can cause delays due to others' schedules.
6. A year and half to two years later, mass production is finished, mass shipping begins.
7. Mass marketing begins along with more mass production.
8. Everyone is happier.

The reason you cannot compare IBM production to OpenPandora is that IBM makes a $20bln profit every year. Well over $100bln in sales and services every year. They have an in-house design and manufacturing team. They have their problems and delays, they just don't offer any information on their delays and grossly overestimate their dates. IBM has almost 100 years of experience doing what they do.

The OpenPandora crew consists of 6 people mainly, ~$1 million in sales with ~$1.01 million in product costs. They have 2 years of experience doing this officially.

For me, if I wanted accuracy and reliability I would go IBM, because I know what I'm getting. Its not what I want, but I know when I'm going to get it. OpenPandora is a new company and are working out the kinks and gaining experience. If you didn't know what you were in for and didn't want to experience anything new, then you shouldn't have joined in the adventure at all. I expect OpenPandora crew, with this new experience will go extremely far as long as they keep the "Open" part of their name accurate.

Noisome

 

[DaM]

The Chinese holidays are a fact of life, if you do business with China. The whole place just shuts down. Even if you are lucky and some of the people you work with are still available, whole factories just close - and all their suppliers are closed too. They are also extremely busy before the shutdown, with everyone trying to get their orders rushed out before the holidays.

And don't forget Customs/air freight backlogs when they start up again!

The Chinese don't really get to pick and choose holidays like we do, they get most of them now (at the Harvest festival) and at the Chinese New Year. Plus the odd one here and there - like Valentines Day FFS!

 

[darkblu]

disappointed? heck, no.

i, for one, am glad that we're getting proper-green production PCBs ;p

 

[Trevsweb]

im bowled over with the steady updates. coming from a Gizmondo background im used to waiting for delayed products... but with pandora theres always been (buzzword time) transpantcy that i respect. what other company would tell you "hey we screwed up, this is how weve solved the problem" and showing of the new parts with parental enthusiasm. its really refreashing to see.

would really love to have my pandora with me soon though theres so many looming plane journeys, i will make someones life i living hell onboard if i didnt have it... (i can't sleep on planes :S) 16 hour flight to india next jan, time to go bat s**t crazy!!! aaarrrrrggghhh

*ahem*

keep up the good work

 

[Exophase]

The Chinese holidays are a fact of life, if you do business with China. The whole place just shuts down. Even if you are lucky and some of the people you work with are still available, whole factories just close - and all their suppliers are closed too. They are also extremely busy before the shutdown, with everyone trying to get their orders rushed out before the holidays.

And don't forget Customs/air freight backlogs when they start up again!

The Chinese don't really get to pick and choose holidays like we do, they get most of them now (at the Harvest festival) and at the Chinese New Year. Plus the odd one here and there - like Valentines Day FFS!

Off topic interjection time :C

I wish we had a week everyone got off, that sounds pretty enjoyable. Japan gets a golden week too. As an American I was spoiled by having 3 month summer breaks, 2 week winter breaks, and 1 week spring breaks throughout my education, including all levels of university. But now that I'm in the professional working world things are very different, all we get are 10 holiday days dispersed throughout the year, mostly in groups of one. It's a long weekend here and there, thanksgiving + the day after, and a single day off for Christmas day. I do get 15+ workdays of paid vacation a year (that accumulates past the year and I make slightly more the longer I work here) but those feel like such a precious resource compared to the 4 months or so I got off at school. I feel like I could really use several days in a row to focus hard programming on stuff at home.

Back on topic:

It's a really good thing that the people who paid for Pandoras are by and large sticking to it because what Open Pandora did was very risky and unconventional. Delays are a fact of life and happen to everyone, but it's abnormal for a company to take money for a product before even finished prototypes and moulds and whatnot exist.. basically OP was using the sales instead of getting a loan or investors. Which works out well for them since they don't have to pay back interest, which in turn can work out well for the user base because less expenses for the company means lower product costs for the end user. And OP really is selling Pandora at a pretty low price, regardless of what some think. But if there weren't a supply of buyers willing to tolerate the delays then the whole thing would have fallen apart.

Probably what OP should have done was to get complete prototype + moulds + certification/testing + absolutely everything needed to begin mass production before taking orders. That way they would have more than likely been ready to shift immediately into mass production and close to guarantee that the units would be shipped by a fairly near date, while still not having to put the full money needed forward from the start. Or at least have been more clear that people were basically funding the whole thing well in advance, rather than giving any suggestion that they were buying a product that was nearly ready to ship.

But things have worked out okay in spite of this so I guess there's no real point complaining. But that doesn't mean that preorders are an investment. I really don't like when people call it this. If YOU consider it an investment towards a product materializing then fine, but it's not an investment in the proper business sense of the word.

 

[Phawx]

I consider it an investment because I don't think I would get a refund if the Pandora never materialized. Our reward for risking our money is getting the Pandora at a cheaper price *and* actually having a chance for it to see the light of day.

At the time OP was ready to go into making the Pandora, they might not have received a loan that large. And if they did, like you said, it would be much more expensive.

I just consider anything I put into *something* with the possibility of nothing to come out of it, an investment. There is risk, otherwise no one would have mentioned scams.

 

[Xtreme2k]

The problem is not only that the boards are made in smaller batches, but that the board production actually stopped after making these first 105 boards. While the OP team always stated that they would do CE testing with a prototype so it would not affekt production timing, at some point they seem to have decided (without telling us) not to do so but to wait for a production model and do CE and FCC testing together, probably to save money.
Since they do not want to risk producing all the boards and find out that they're not CE compliant later, the board production will not go on until the first cases are there and the CE/FCC-test is done. The boards cannot be done in a few days like the cases, so there's no chance at all for the past-105 to be shipped in October :-(

 

[Asmo]

with pandora theres always been (buzzword time) transpantcy that i respect.

The Pandora can pass through underwear? Worth knowing.

 

[droneb]

Someone Should Knock on the OP.ca server door and request the errase of the 9 in october.

 

[MWeston]

You realize that the 9 is actually 09 which is 2009 right? It's not Oct. 9, 2009. Wow.

 

[droneb]

XD sry,but i knew about pandora this year, you cant blame me.

i believe if we made a poll it would show 9 as a day nor a year (a poll on pp who doesnt know about panda)

 

[Polossatik]

.. big update about IBM and so beeing payed upfront...
Noisome

I know, I work in a similar tech company.
My update was intended to show you cannot compare them (like your update). Maybe I was not clear, in that case it missed the point... Aldo I tried to be clear:

... (some) people seam not be able to cope with the simple fact that the pandora team is not some big molog who keeps everything internally hooked up and provide (sometimes a bit to optimistic - I agree) info just as it comes along...

I simply approached it from an "end user" perspective (who are most people) where end users only "see" IBM (or apple) announcing a date to start sell things.

 

[aaronson911]

It's not a new bottleneck, it's just a different look at the same bottleneck.

Original plan, as I understand it, was basically
1) Get 10'000 cases
2) Get (or wait for) 400 boards
3) Assemble and ship 400 Pandoras
4) if more boards coming, go to 2

Now, new plan kinda looks like
1) Get 400 boards
2) If no cases, go to 1
3) Get 10'000 cases
4) Assemble and ship N Pandoras (let N = number of boards that arrived before cases)
5) Get (or wait for) 400 boards
6) Assemble and ship 400 Pandoras
7) if more boards coming, go to 5

Originally they couldn't do anything until the cases arrived. But even when they had the cases, they were still only going to send them out in batches of 400 (or something like that, unless I'm misremembering). The mould was the bottleneck to getting the first ones shipped, not the last.

Hey WizardStan, I really hope you are correct and that they will start production of the 106th board soon. unforchantly I tend to share the same opinion with Xtreme2k.

The problem is not only that the boards are made in smaller batches, but that the board production actually stopped after making these first 105 boards. While the OP team always stated that they would do CE testing with a prototype so it would not affekt production timing, at some point they seem to have decided (without telling us) not to do so but to wait for a production model and do CE and FCC testing together, probably to save money.
Since they do not want to risk producing all the boards and find out that they're not CE compliant later, the board production will not go on until the first cases are there and the CE/FCC-test is done. The boards cannot be done in a few days like the cases, so there's no chance at all for the past-105 to be shipped in October :-(

I would love to be proven wrong but the Dev’s could have already started producing more boards by now but they haven’t or at least haven’t told us.

 

[droneb]

+1

yup, the last time a thread talked about timings and bottle necks thats what i wanted to say (tnx aaron* to xpress it better)

its the intermediary time thats got everyone worried because it seems that it wasnt taken into account.

maybe the first panda gets shipped october, but when is the 106 and 4000th one going to be shipped?

 

[Phawx]

Here's a question:

If you are not legally allowed to sell the Pandora in the UK without CE testing. Does OP do CE testing first and wait to see *before* they ship 100 Pandora's? Or is OP going to ship them before the certification to developers and treat them like RC prototype's?

I mean it's great and all that the 105 will be shipped by October, but there is still another couple of weeks worth of certifying and testing that needs to be done *before* Mass Production begins. All of November might be consumed during this testing/certifying phase.

I think it may be prudent to have a schedule laid out after the first 105 are done. It *kinda* seems like we are encroaching on 2010 territory.

 

[Xtreme2k]

It is allowed to sell them without CE test (you don't even have to do the test at all), but the seller would be forced to take them back if they do not comply CE and someone complains.

What I'd like to know from the OP team is why they did not order a final prototype case as soon as the moulding started for doing CE with it as soon as possible, just like they always stated before. This seems to be a really homemade and unnecessary delay to me :-(

 

[SNESFAN]

maybe the first panda gets shipped october, but when is the 106 and 4000th one going to be shipped?

I'd be interested to know this as well, but to be honest. Once I see a fully completed model and all the youtube videos start popping up from the happy customers all my angst and anticipitation built up over the past couple years will be gone.

As much as I want to hold one in my hand, actually seeing what i'm going to be getting for real is all I'm really waiting on, while I expect this to be surpurb and used often, this is just another gadget to add to the collection.

 

[carlgeorge]

Here's a question:

If you are not legally allowed to sell the Pandora in the UK without CE testing. Does OP do CE testing first and wait to see *before* they ship 100 Pandora's? Or is OP going to ship them before the certification to developers and treat them like RC prototype's?

I mean it's great and all that the 105 will be shipped by October, but there is still another couple of weeks worth of certifying and testing that needs to be done *before* Mass Production begins. All of November might be consumed during this testing/certifying phase.

I think it may be prudent to have a schedule laid out after the first 105 are done. It *kinda* seems like we are encroaching on 2010 territory.

I have to agree with this. It's great that 105 units will be out there soon, but what about the other 3.5k units? When will we see these?

I have booked a holiday to Oz for the second half of Nov 09; I was hoping to have my Pandora for the flight, but even that is looking very unlikely at the moment IMHO. What is the plan to deliver the majority of consoles? And where's the video that Craig has been working on for the past couple of months?

 

[craigix]

The reason I've not posted a new video recently is that we want it to end with a final production unit, and we are working as fast as we can towards that.