GameStick delays shipments till August

Shipments to Kickstarter backers of PlayJam’s Android microconsole GameStick have been delayed by a further month till August.

The company said that the delay was due to problems developing the user interface, which has taken longer than anticipated.

As part of the rewards for donators who had donated $300 or more to the project, backers have been beta testing the console UI and providing feedback to help create a finalised version.

PlayJam had already delayed shipments of the GameStick back in April by two months due to what it claimed was “higher-than expected” demand.

The microconsole was expected to launch exclusively in GAME this month, although this will now come after units have been shipped to Kickstarter backers.

“As a result we have not yet had the feedback that we wanted prior to finalising the UI and going ahead with mass production,” read a statement from the company on its Kickstarter page.

“In the spirit of Kickstarter it would be disingenuous of us to cut out this process and not give those backers the opportunity to comment on and help perfect the UI prior to completion. We have therefore taken the decision to push back the whole project by 1 month to ensure we can fit this process in.

“We appreciate that this will frustrate backers keen to get their hands on their device but we did not feel it was fair to bypass this step as it was a key pledge and the feedback will be really welcome. We now expect to ship product from China during early August and expect it to be with you by the middle of the month, prior to units launching in retail.”

Despite the delays, tooling has been complete for the hardware, which PlayJam said will enable it to produce thousands of consoles a day once finishing touches have been completed on the UI.