How will Pyra production be funded?

[Mr_Loon]

Perhaps I am naive, but I think it may be better to try to engineer an article on Slashdot or Phoronix or Hacker News or similar, for a more receptive audience than on Kickstarter

How about both, can't see why they'd be mutually exclusive....

 

[Grench]

Considering how fast that last short pre-prototype work in progress video popped to liliputing, I suspect that showing a fully working unit in complete case plastics running OpenOffice, a web browser at full speed, an emulator and anything under Exagear with a "Preorders Open" announcement should pop to a broad range of news feeds.

 

[rygD]

But will we get the numbers needed in sensible time? I want to think it might be like it was with the prepreorders, however I have this nagging in the back of my mind that another product may have grabbed a bunch of those sales.

 

[TrashyMG]

@Stellanatus well in a few cases with the Pandora it ended up with reviewers slamming it because they had no clue what to make of the device or how to use it.

 

[Ian J]

@Stellanatus well in a few cases with the Pandora it ended up with reviewers slamming it because they had no clue what to make of the device or how to use it.

+1 on this most reviews I read were negative as the reviewer didn't want to put ANY effort in when something didn't work out of the box.

I remember gamester81's being pretty bad on youtube.

He should have done a follow up video as some of the info he gave was just wrong.

EDIT:

I think if people are going to do a review they need to show they can do the Pyra justice and not just say "hey I got x amount of viewers/readers"

Having hundreds of thousands of people see a bad review is worse than having only a few hundred see a decent review.

Just had a look at the comments on gamester81's video and even now the comments are saying stuff like "where do I get one of these" and "what's the point of this get a raspberry pi"

EDIT2:

MAybe we can suggest where Pyra's should be sent for review, eg specific youtube channels or sites.

Personally I would prefer the community collaborate on a video.

 

[rygD]

I can think of one particular British YouTuber that can probably treat Pyra fairly.

 

[Ian J]

I can think of one particular British YouTuber that can probably treat Pyra fairly.

Care to share?

Only channel I can think of would be Techmoan, it's not his usual product but he does a very good job of anything he covers.

This is his blog.

 

[rygD]

Care to share?

I was thinking of ashens, but after that post I went to watch his Pandora review. Within 3 minutes I already had a handful of bad info. Didn't feel like watching the whole thing again.

 

[Ian J]

I was thinking of ashens, but after that post I went to watch his Pandora review. Within 3 minutes I already had a handful of bad info. Didn't feel like watching the whole thing again.

Yeah Ashens is more about providing entertainment than facts.

We need someone who respects all the hard work that has gone into bringing a device like this to the masses.

 

[rygD]

Maybe we can get Woz to do a review. That would be awesome, and I don't think there is much bad he could say about it. He really does think different, he seems to like strange things, and Pyra is a bit strange.

 

[levi]

I was thinking of ashens, but after that post I went to watch his Pandora review. Within 3 minutes I already had a handful of bad info. Didn't feel like watching the whole thing again.

How do you mean, bad info? I'm not sure he got the GPU frequency right, but who really cares? It's clearly a fanboyish review, or perhaps he was lucky and got a unit with decent nubs, but it impressed me how much the old Pandora was able to run that early on. I'd forgotten that all those emulators were usable that quickly (he skips over some games on some systems that were problematic to get running).

I'd be in favour of sending Ashens a unit to review, if he wants one. That review was obviously a labour of love, with a lot of time spent setting up SD cards beforehand.

 

[iprice]

Ashens only really gives bad reviews to products that are generally bad. He knows when something has potential or is worth owning and can do really honest and open reviews - he's never fan-boyish either. Plus he's got a huge fanbase.

 

[rygD]

How do you mean, bad info?

Basically, he said it was entirely designed and made in the UK, including the case. I don't remember exactly what was said, but most of it related to that was wrong, what I call bad info, and not in the "I am trying to be funny" way. It doesn't matter much, but a lot has changed since then, and that bad info could be confusing for those that don't know the full story of the issues with the Pandora and such. Those people might point at the Pyra and ED and say "why trust him/them to do it right now?" when it was ED that kept the Pandora alive and tried to get the community through those times, and to fix some of the things that were done.

 

[WizardStan]

It doesn't matter much, but a lot has changed since then

Yes, a lot has changed since then. At the time of the review, he wasn't entirely off though, basically by nothing more than understandable marketing spin, so I fail to see the problem. Seems to me that if you're so worried about "those people" getting confused then you should be very much in favour of Ashens getting a Pyra so he has a chance to set them right.

 

[rygD]

Seems to me that if you're so worried about "those people" getting confused then you should be very much in favour of Ashens getting a Pyra so he has a chance to set them right.

Not worried. Also, I was the one that mentioned sending him one. I just commented that I didn't remember the bad info before watching a few minutes of it again, and wasn't sure if I had forgotten more. I thought I remembered it being more thorough and detailed than many others (plus I think he can put a lot of eyes on the Pyra). Overall, I remember enjoying his video about the Pandora, which is why I thought of him when fair video reviews were mentioned.

Is it a prototype or unit from the first run that is proposed to be sent to reviewers?

 

[PokeParadox]

Ashens was one of the positive reviews.

 

[Ian J]

I suppose the big question is did ED see higher sales after that video was posted?

EDIT:

I think to work out where/how it should be promoted we first need an idea of how much it's going to cost.

No point trying to promote a £600* pocket PC to certain areas of the internet.

BUT if a KS selling say 200,0000* units could get the price down to say £300* each that would make promotion a lot easier.

* I just made these up as examples I have no idea what the final product will cost.

 

[levi]

I'd assume a first run unit at the very earliest. Software-wise, you could consider the process until now as having been in pre-alpha, and fettling the software while the prototypers are developing and testing on it is the alpha phase. Those first preorder units will be public beta IMO, at least in terms of the software IMO.

Edit: @Ian J - that video was posted before ED got involved in production of the Pandora - that was still a CraigIx and CC production IIRC. ED was selling them to continental customers while Brits and Yanks who were perhaps more likely to be viewing Ashens beforehand would probably have ordered through Craigix, and as you may know, trying to get accurate numbers out of Craigix is a little problematic in general.

 

[ckblackm]

How would crowd funding work for those of us with the $75 credit at ithic.com or who normally buy from there?

 

[lukey]

How would crowd funding work for those of us with the $75 credit at ithic.com or who normally buy from there?

I think ED's plan is to make the Preorders simply as Voucher for the DragonBox Shop.