Remember the GCW Zero?

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Yeah I’d almost forgotten as well. After a scaled down version of the Open Pandora saga it seems as though the Zero might be ready to ship very soon. Dingoonity member Articus drove 13 hours to help Justin flash a shipment of an estimated 400 units last weekend. Although only a fraction of these Open Dingux driven handhelds will have been sorted in that time, you can see from the picture that at least the “Special Edition” consoles are in the country and almost ready to ship.

Unfortunately it comes too late for some. With an estimated shipment date of August 2012 it’s understandable that many have already given up hope and claimed their refund. It seems to be a running theme in these endeavours. Promises are continuously made and broken, and in the end a huge portion of the original backers feel ostracised when they complain. Being an original backer myself I’ve barely managed to bite my tongue as I sit patiently waiting, but at least here I can speak my mind without fear of a backlash from the GCW apologists. If anything this project has been run with less integrity than even the Open Pandora project. It boggles the mind to see someone follow in almost the exact same footsteps as Craigix when it comes to communication (or lack thereof) especially considering Justin had a blueprint of exactly how NOT to conduct business. But I’ve had a few beers and I can’t be bothered to whinge too much.

Hopefully in the next month or so all us SE backers will have our Zeros, and I’m expecting great things from it. You kick starter backers might be waiting a little longer as there’s still no word on whether all of your units are in the country yet. Here’s to hoping.

9 thoughts on “Remember the GCW Zero?”

  1. Yes, I was only thinking of the Kickstarter backers. I didn’t really know the situation of the SE backers. I tried to disclaimer that but must not have been clear enough.

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  2. Ahh I knew you’d blog about this. I’ve been lurking around the dingux forum reading the developments too. Enjoy your holidays. Cheers

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  3. I’ll admit it I’m pretty ticked off. There were never any SE consoles, we’ve been lied to, kept in he dark, and ignored. That’s not how you treat your customers if you want to build a loyal fan base and community. I’ve pretty much soured on this project. That may change after this debacle is a distant memory but I think with all the recent hardware advances the GCW might be a dust collector that ends up being a momentary blip on the screen of handheld history. We’ll see if they can keep up with hardware advances or if they’ll fall behind like GPH.

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  4. At the risk of sounding like an “apologist”, I’m not sure what the problem is. The Open Pandora project, which I was also an initial supporter of, drug on for a good 3-4 years after their initial promised delivery date not to mention all the banking troubles and refunds after the exchange rate plummeted. Now I’m not looking to rip on Open Pandora but I don’t see how a 3 month delay on a grossly ambitious and unbelievable ship date is somehow equivalent to a 3 year delay seems a bit harsh. I can see special edition backers being a little upset (and maybe you fall into that category) but the Kickstarter backers don’t really have anything to complain about just yet, IMO.

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    • 3 months? August 2012 to June 2013 is a lot more than 3 months. Maybe you are thinking of the Kickstarter promise of March 2013? They still haven’t got theirs, and if I am reading this post correctly, they won’t get theirs until after pre-Kickstarter backers, like Alex, get theirs. So that will still be more than 3 months.

      People have every right to complain when they have paid money upfront for something and don’t get it when promised, or even close to that time.

      Yes, it is a risk you take whenever you pre-order something, especially something from a kickstarter style start-up endevour. But that doesn’t change the fact that waiting for something you’ve long ago paid for sucks really badly.

      On a not-completely unrelated side-note, I finally got my OUYA last week. I want to play with it some more before posting a review, I’ve been pretty busy with life stuff. Hopefully I’ll have something in the next week or so. But, if you need a quick TL:DR teaser based on what I’ve seen so far – It has potential, but is not really impressive as of yet.

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    • Three months late? Its been over a year since SE backers made their first payment and it’s been about 10 months since the unit was supposed to have shipped. Not quite Pandora scale but the length of the delay is not the only factor. A ten month delay could be forgiven if the guy who took our money was forthcoming with information and updates. The last time I emailed Justin he had the cheek to tell me everything was on track and there would not be a delay. I think by this time he’d forgotten they were supposed to have already shipped in July/August 2012, then October, then early December in time for Christmas, then as a New Year’s surprise, then in February before CNY, then before March 25th, and here we are almost in June…

      Thankfully it really does look like shipping is imminent now so we can put this saga to bed.

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    • Yes, I was only thinking of the Kickstarter backers. I didn’t really know the situation of the SE backers. I tried to disclaimer that but must not have been clear enough.

      Reply

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