It's a no-win situation. No matter what we do, somebody's gonna be upset.
I don't expect people to know the ins and outs of mass manufacturing, but let me just say that it is not as clean and cut as many might assume.
You have to find a factory, you have to find somebody to help you communicate with that factory, you have to overcome language barriers to communicate ideas, your engineers have to work with their engineers which requires many trips to China, you need to convince them to make a change they may not deem sensible, they have to make tools (molds for the plastic) which are very expensive, take a very long time to make, and may not be made correctly the first time. The design gets updated, the tool has to be drilled out or built up and changed, which also takes time. You have to take into consideration the limits of injection molding when designing, you have to source parts from companies, you need to theorize, develop, build, and mass-produce a motion sensor, figure out how to calibrate them and then write the software to make it work, you have to find a new display manufacturer after the display you wanted to use wasn't available, you have to deal with much, MUCH larger sales figures than first anticipated, you have to hire people to do the things you need, you have to get external help for other things, you have to figure out how to add a focus adjustment system and go through several iterations until you find something that will work, you need to compensate for the closer lenses that this adjustment system creates by adding a mechanism to move the screen and lenses further, you need to plan trips to conventions, you need to deal with computers not working and you have have to deal with having to work very, very late to get something working for the next day. You need to create software to actually use the device with, an SDK to make it easy to use, add engine integrations, and create demos to show it off. You get the preliminary product and find problems with it so you need to go through another round of revisions, which once again take a lot of time and money. And all the while you have to answer a barrage of questions from crazy enthusiasts who speculate on everything and think we're not trying, when in fact they just don't see everything that goes on behind the scenes (not bashing on you guys here, it's just the truth
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
).
It's not easy designing, mass-producing, and shipping a finished product in less than eight months. Trust me, I would know, I've been in the company since before the Kickstarter lanuched. I'm sorry things have been spotty, but please bear with me because you
are getting a product no matter what.
Edit: Reading this post again, I realize this came off rather rant-ish. I admit it was slightly made of out frustration, sorry about that. You guys gotta just chill out a tad, everything will be fine.
Edit 2: Really not too proud of this post any more, but I'll leave it.