Hasta La Gadget!

Fancied PlayJams’ GameStick Android gaming console enough to back it on Kickstarter earlier this year? The good news is that Dev units have been shipping to the roughly 600 who signed up, with the remaining ones set to head out within a week. The bad news? The early-backer versions are now set to arrive at doorsteps in late June instead of April because of high-demand, according to PlayJam. As its latest Kickstarter update details, the units will need stronger tooling than the silicon-based molds of the dev units to ensure that “tens of thousands” of them can be successfully made. Additionally, this will apparently force the company to ship these larger factory yields via sea transport rather than air, which also slows things down.

A case of success causing slowdowns it seems. Hopefully not much longer than these new estimates, too — while this breakout underdog is set to hit retailers like GameStop, that other Android-based console, OUYA, is already shipping out to backers — and its retail units are planned in June. You’ll find the full update from PlayJam at the source link.

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Source: PlayJam (Kickstarter)

The GameStick is the second of two Kickstarter-backed Android-powered game consoles announced in the past 12 months, and its arguably the less visible of the two (the other being OUYA, of course). It’s a bit different than the OUYA as well, in terms of both form factor and specs: the GameStick is roughly the size of a USB thumb drive and runs a dual-core Amlogic processor, rather than the Tegra 3 found in the OUYA. Similar to the OUYA, the GameStick also comes with a proprietary wireless controller — the standard four button layout, two analog sticks, two shoulder buttons, and a d-pad make up its inputs — though the GameStick’s controller is actually the bulk of the hardware. The GameStick itself actually nestles into the back of the controller, making the whole bundle rather portable.

But perhaps you already know all of this? We have been hearing about the GameStick for some time now. Should that be the case, you’ll wanna know how the thing actually feels, and we can deliver that just beyond the break, as we’ve just put GameStick and its controller through the paces.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, HD

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Playjam, the team behind GameStick, has announced that a new deal with tech company Pivos will ensure that the previously-mentioned XBMC will arrive fully-formed on its Kickstarter console. All those Media Center features will sidle up alongside your games selection and while the company maintains that gaming is still the focus of its device, given the competition, we’d say this announcement makes a whole lot of sense.

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GameStick ended its Kickstarter campaign two weeks ago, and today, it looks like its creators, PlayJam, are moving along to the next step of its release as it’s now available for pre-order.

The pre-order website for the GameStick offers the GameStick and its controller in white for $79, a GameStick Dock for $24.99 and a GameStick case for $9.99. Those who pre-order their GameStick will need to wait for those who backed PlayJam’s Kickstarter campaign to receive their orders first, which are expected to start shipping in April.

As of now, there are no plans to bring the GameStick to retailers, unlike its Android-console competitor, the Ouya, which is expected to be made available for sale at select retailers starting in June. Seeing how small the GameStick and controller will be compared to the Ouya, we wouldn’t be surprised if it made its way to retailers as well. Until that day comes, those who are interested in the GameStick should visit its web store to place their pre-order or buy any of its additional accessories. Just don’t plan on buying additional controllers at this point since they’re currently unavailable.

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Android gaming devices have been making quite a splash lately as Ouya, GameStick and NVIDIA Shield has garnered interest by gamers everywhere at their possibilities. We have yet to see what any of these devices are capable of doing as a retail product, but one of those Android-gaming devices has announced the end of quite the successful run on Kickstarter.

GameStick is announcing today the end of their Kickstarter campaign, which received its funding goal of $100,000 after just two days and even set a new goal shortly after for the device to have a microSD slot. At its end, GameStick received over six times what it was looking for to receiving nearly $650,000, or $647,658 to be exact.

Now that the campaign has been fully funded six times over, it’s now up to PlayJam to deliver on their promise of producing and shipping over 5,000 GameStick devices by April. We’re just hoping those of you who backed the campaign don’t regret your decision as Android games are still somewhat lacking when compared to iOS games.

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