Crystal is here. Reserve yours

[Axacuatl]

I guess it might be a good time for a small interim check on a discussion we held in October of last year now that we see the Pimax COO addressing the “same few people” as being overly negative:

My statement:

@Axacuatl

Idealistic Hopes: Announcement of a ground-breaking product Reality which is going to be released in the coming 3 months, in a good shape with ease of use, polish & reliability. (clearly not going to happen)

More Realistic Expectations: A lot of marketing mumble, but with the prototype of Reality being shown but no clear short-term avaibility and over-promising on specs (just like the wireless module and Sword Sense controllers which never materialized), leaving us with a “ sure, sounds good, but let’s wait and see what they deliver when the day comes, and in which state it is ”

Fears: None of the above, just a marketing exercise to remain in the conversation with lots of lofty promises for some vague future products, Reality not even being in prototype stage yet but just a mere design study, 10K, microOLED, wireless, you name it, but all of it stated to be road map with complete obscurity as to when these will materialize in which combination in which product. Comparable to the Oculus tweets of last week, which don’t give us any idea whatsoever if that is 6 months or 8 years away…

Pimax COO’s responses:

@PimaxUSA

No I’m saying that your previous predictions are always wrong.

[…]
Bottom line all your posts revolve around the same thing. You attempt to create as much fear as possible via deductions that have no basis in fact. The theme is the same, Pimax bankrupt and therefore will never deliver 8KX, MAS, Sword etc. to create fear and doubt so customers who own Pimax are afraid and those who don’t avoid the company.

Your new thing is Pimax might announce something but… Same theme as all your other posts that turned out to be incorrect.

@PimaxUSA

Fortunately historically 0% of your predictions here have been accurate or even in the ballpark. You are just trying to set a negative stage just in case we announce anything people might like.
[…]

So, fact check in November 2022:

Crystal (announced in May 2022 to be shipped in Q3 2022): delayed and (more importantly) not completely functioning yet, e.g. apparently the entire stand-alone part which surely contributes prominently to the price tag of 2 grand is said to be non-functional for the time being in the devices being said to ship soon^TM.

The 12K, which this discussion relates to, was announced to be available at the end of 2022. It is now said to be at 70% and not arrive this year, with no new ETA given.

How does that translate to my predictions? My realistic expectation, which was met with the “0% accuracy” comment, said that I expected a lot of marketing mumble, but with the prototype of Reality being shown but no clear short-term avaibility and over-promising on specs: the 12K promises A LOT, that can be said without any doubt, and it was not available within 3 months from October 2021. And it is already known to be delayed. And it has so many specs to fulfil, that it will be really interesting to see if all of these will be present in the product shipping one; present in a shape which meets the reasonable expectations of the customers for a device priced at 2,5 grand.

So far it seems my reasonable expectation is pretty much on track, with the caveat that we will have to see about the presence & quality of the features once the 12K is released. (I do invite critics to challenge me on the feature completeness in good function of the 12K if it arrives at least in 2023)

And by the way, my objective is not to create fear and drive users away from Pimax, rather to caution them to not pre-order a product based on marketing talk rather than solid hands-on experience from unbiased reviewers. Why? Because I have gained experience with Pimax announcements vs. performance over the last couple of years.

If Pimax doesn’t like it, if they want us to shut up, there’s a very simple way to do so: get the products out in time and in good shape. Or to put it differently - don’t make promises which you’ll not meet, and - with all due respect - which you should know that you won’t meet them. So far my predictions worked better than the predictions of the COO and his colleagues.