I do think they mystery box is a bad idea in the first place though. They made it seem like they wanted to do something for the community. Well guess what, the community already has a headset so won’t be buying that mystery box. The only people who are interested in the mystery box are people who don’t have a pimax headset. So it’s quite a bummer to begin with. I mean, really, nobody who has a Pimax headset will pay $499 and will want to risk getting a Pimax 5k, if they already own such a model or better.
It’s what makes this day extra sour. All this hype and then we get pretty much nothing.
$499, 533 EUR, with the euro being less worth than a dollar nowadays. It’s actually cheaper than a 5k. So it’s an interesting deal if you want a 5k. Then you get the 5k even cheaper than usually and have a chance of winning a Crystal. But this is not doing anything good for people who already own a Pimax. I mean all this hype and then they come up with this? Still need to process this. It’s certainly one for the ‘big book of pimax f*ckups’. Like who makes this stuff up??
The mystery box including the Crystal is on Pimax’s website now. You can order it right now. It’s not listed as any sort of pre-order. That is a fact.
The idea that Pimax has not put this up on their website in good faith and can not actually fulfill it is speculation.
The idea that Pimax would announce the launch of the Crystal during their 7 year anniversary events was only speculation by customers, not something Pimax indicated. This isn’t a promise Pimax didn’t keep. It’s not even anything they said.
Can is some time in the futre. Now is - they have a boxed unit with Mystery Box stamped on it with the winners name and address on it ready for the courier.
I wonder if they’ll wait for all of them to be sold before shipping. Like if the crystal was in the first 10, and then that person got it and posted online then no one would buy any of the rest. Always found the mystery boxes a bit weird…although I did actually buy one last year and was pretty happy with it tbf ha.
Anyway, gonna be keeping an eye out over the next 4 days for any news but not expecting much. Hopefully we’ll at least get some statement clarifying things and adjusted timelines if there is a delay or such. The fact that they included the cystal in the mystery box would generally imply that it’s pretty soon as they can’t hold off shipping mystery boxes to those that didn’t get the crystal but also not fair to only give it to someone at the end of it. Actually have no idea how it is raffled off. I guess they could always just tell the crystal buyer that they got the crystal but need to wait a month or whatever, that would be odd but I guess if you got one for 1/4 of the price then it might be bearable ha.
I doubt it. I expect they just ship them as they get orders just like any other product. If they have any concerns about whoever gets the Crystal posting online before the mystery box’s are all ordered, all they’d need to do is make the Crystal the 70th (last) order.
Even if the Crystal wasn’t in there, the mystery box is a good deal for some people. I have friends who have purchased Pimax mystery boxes because it made getting into VR affordable for them. They hoped to receive the best model, but any model would get them into VR with a basestation tracking headset that could be upgraded with FBT.
Not everyone has the same needs and financial capabilities.
Also note that the mystery boxes are eligible for the 12K trade-in.
Based on what we’ve been told by Pimax, I see no reason why they can’t ship a Crystal now. The hardware is finalized. They are in production. They’ve said they have working stable firmware. Their standalone store won’t be open yet. So whoever receives the Crystal would be running on pre-release beta software. They won’t have access to all features yet, but I imagine they’d be able to play SteamVR games in tethered mode like an 8KX.
I expect Pimax would reach out to whatever customer gets the Crystal to give them special help in getting it working with this pre-release stuff.
At a guess, they’d be getting the same kit and same help as reviewer samples.
Pimax holds a large anniversary event with multiple days of events which ends up perfectly lining up with the stated launch of the Crystal which as of today has yet to be officially delayed. Of course we are all going to put the two together. Why would Pimax line the two events up together if they weren’t meant to coincide. Was this not meant to drive hype for the upcoming launch? And if the Anniversary event truly was not meant to have anything at all to do with the Crystal why make it this week? Since according to PimaxQuarra in the official announcement, the actual anniversary doesn’t take place until Quarter 4. So why line up this event with the launch of the Crystal if they are not related? Doing things this way is only going to drive more disappointment as we are yet again left in the dark on the fate of the Crystal.
For the record I am not against a delay. I have said this multiple times, I would rather a complete feature rich headset that is reliable and works out of the box as opposed to one that is rushed and janky just to meet some arbitrary deadline. They just need to tell us…something…anything. This is the point I am trying to drive home here. I am not complaining just to complain like some people seem to believe. I am not a Pimax hater just because I call them out on problems they should have ironed out years ago. People have insisted Pimax has changes so I am holding them to that. Them going dark because they are afraid of the backlash from a delay announcement is only going to get worse and worse the longer they stay quiet. This has literally been the only constant with Pimax.
Kevin confirmed a press release in the next few days, and he said it should make everyone happy. Not sure how often he comes here though (I jest, I jest).
Why not just wait til the release window closes then? It seems like the still intend on hitting it, so if they don’t then by all means push for answers but until then you just want them to confirm what they already said? If they haven’t said contrary then best to just go along with it.
I understand the frustration, I felt it today with the mystery box thing, but there’s no point in moaning. There’s also a trend to hold Pimax to totally different standards and scrutinise everything they do. I guess it cou
Pimax has massively matured over the years. They still aren’t perfect but they have improved a huge amount. They haven’t went dark btw, if that was the case then literally every company making VR hardware has gone dark. Why do Pimax have to run their business differently from everyone else?
Anyway, let’s see what this press release is. I’m guessing we’ll see like a 1 month delay but considering the rather…eh…strict lockdowns they had a couple of months ago, I think that’s pretty reasonable. Who knows though, maybe they will actually start taking orders and shipping from this/next week. Let’s just wait til Q3 is done, only 4 days ha
They definitely do some things better than before. Not taking money upfront is an example of that. But this whole mess-up today is really typically Pimax and it’s been that way since the beginning. This mystery box thing was just a really dumb idea. They could have easily done things differently and avoided all this, but oh well.
I just skimmed through discord. So it sounds like they’re going to open pre-orders but without any payment in advance. And I’m speculating that we’ll be getting a new ETA for release (I mean an ETA is normally part of the deal when you open for pre-orders). And it sounded like they want to get this press release out before the end of the month, which is good to hear. So let’s see what happens.
