Jesus, there’s enough negativity here to make anyone depressed.
I think the problem is far less the product itself and more the whole timing and circumstances of it. I think the idea of Pimax wanting to sort of move beyond purely the VR market isn’t a bad one in terms of trying to keep the company afloat long term and make it grow into something larger.
Emphasis idea.
Kickstarter itself is also not a terrible sign by itself, I have seen some small/medium sized companies use it as more of an interest to gauge the market and see if people even want it. KatVR, for example, has launched multiple successful products in the consumer and enterprise sphere, yet it did Kickstarter for the Kat Walk C2 for that reason. Tens of mill isn’t chump change in the business world, but it’s not a whole lot for bigger companies, but smaller companies may still be able to have that spending power, but cannot take wild risks with that kind of money without some kind of assurance.
However, my example with KatVR? They were quite proactive before the Kickstarter. Before it even began, they had sent out some review units to multiple people and had videos going up either shortly before the kickstarter or soon after it began. This showed a lot of confidence in the product and also their capacity to make it.
Pimax, on the other hand? Uuuuuh, well, we’re finally gonna be getting roadshows to let people try it, but that’s come well after the product was announced, and the kickstarter will even be going up before those roadshows have begun. They have not sent out review copies to people to give major impressions before this stuff goes live.
And there in lies the problem here. The current situation makes it easy to view Pimax as being flaky or unfocused. Were we in the timeline where multiple reviews already had a Crystal and videos going up, even if the crystal was not launched to the public, we could have something tangible and with third party impressions on if Pimax has managed to pivot and has stuff to start showing success in their rapid scaling up. But as of right now, we don’t have any Reality device and there’s already been some delays and pushbacks from it, this while confirming it will ship feature incomplete.
Yet, then here along comes Pimax announcing a device which is everything and the kitchen sink at once. When we’re still waiting on what they already have promised.
Offering a budget option is not bad.
Trying to expand their market pull from a tiny, niche enthusiast market is not bad either
Trying to grow the company larger with that is also not bad.
But Pimax is clearly attempting to scale up very fast and without having something from their new plans with a track record, it does not inspire confidence. Yes, Pimax has released several HMDs before, this ain’t Decagear. However, Pimax’s new plans are a huge step up from their old HMDs and promising so many things we haven’t seen from them yet. And thus it’s hard to put significant faith in them for it.
I’m glad that we’re finally getting roadshows to demo these products and get some third party impressions(Even in a controlled environment), but it shouldn’t have taken this long or gotten to this place to begin with.
