GameStick Hits Production Delays Due to Popularity

The GameStick micro console by PlayJam caught our attention with its wildly popular Kickstarter campaign that netted more than six times its goal of $100,000. It’s a clever idea — placing an entire console on something the size of a flash drive that can be easily plugged into a television’s HDMI port. The problem is that GameStick became a little too popular, and not just for gaming hipsters. The huge number of backers means GameStick has had to delay shipment of units for backers until June.

GameStick will be shipping its developer units — about 600 — out on time, but the units promised to early backers of the project on Kickstarter have been delayed. That’s because instead of having to produce and ship a few thousand consoles as expected, they actually have to produce and ship tens of thousands of units. That creates more problems than just the extra time needed to build the tiny game systems.

Due to the larger-than-anticipated order, the GameStick consoles will have to be shipped from the manufacturer by boat rather than by plane. In almost every case, planes are faster than boats, but they can’t carry as much weight. The system was supposed to ship to backers this month, but now it seem folks will just have to be a bit more patient as they wait for their tiny game console.

(Kickstarter via Engadget, image via PlayJam)

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