The mere fact that it is already less expensive speaks volumes to how incompetent the team actually is. If they could make it better and less expensive in less than a month, why the hell did they not wait another month!
I don't think that John Carlsen seems like he was the right guy to engineer a low-cost and well-designed system for them, but I totally believe that he was just continually bloating up the system costs in order to try to deliver on the crazy stuff that Mike kept on promising.
Haha ... yep, still 8 days left on the original failed IndieGoGo, and they're already promising the world for the next one, and heaping all the blame on John Carlsen.
From IndieGogo yesterday ...
We are now working with a new lead hardware engineer and have been successful reengineering a good chunk of cost out of our initial design by simplifying our PCB architecture. We will be back by the end of the year with a playable prototype, a lower purchase price and a significantly lower minimum campaign goal. We appreciate your support and hope we can count on it again when we bring RETRO VGS to Kickstarter this winter.
Thanks again,
- Mike & Steve
So Mike hasn't learned the biggest lesson in all of this - that he needs to keep his mouth shut....
Can he not see how ridiculous it is that the first (failed) IGG campaign isn't even over, yet he is spouting that they have gone back to the drawing board and already have "better" and "less expensive"?
And now they're already talking about launching a new Kickstarter campaign early next year ... even though they're still putting the 1st prototype system together and, from FaceBook ...
We are waiting to have the hardware nailed down before approaching or reappoaching dev's at this time so not to waste anyone's time. It is my hope they will get back on board once they see a playable prototype.
So they still need to persuade their Steam-game-on-a-cart developers that they'll do a better job this time, and get them to sign up again.
Nope, I don't think that he's learned that lesson at all!