The cake was a lie
January 25, 2010Update: EvilDragon saves the day! Some good news from the dragon. Jump in and head to the bottom for his German forum post roughly translated to english by mali (& Vlynndar).
Update 2: MWeston corrects misinformation about the mold price.
It’s been just over a week since China said that they’ve thrown the cases in the mail. Now it seems that problems on MWeston’s end will hold up the case even further.
The cases won’t be here until Thurs/Fri at best. We’ve got some really bad weather here right now which is shutting down a lot of services and China didn’t ship exactly when they said they would (shocking I know!).
MWeston
Michael goes on to explain the tenuous communication links between himself and China.
I have no idea what has been going on in China since the 15th. They only email me when something is wrong and only answer me on Skype when something is done or if something is wrong. It’s a real treat.
The good news is that I was told these have a final finish and silk screening all according to my last review. They also promise to pump out as many cases as possible before their holiday so we can satisfy at least those who ordered first, maybe more.
…maybe, maybe, maybe… yeah I’m sick of that too
MWeston
It’s possible that these promises are attempts at trying to cover the fact that they didn’t send the cases when they said they did, we don’t have any solid evidence.
Craig has a few tidbits of news about his IPhone game.
Managed to find the time over the weekend to finish my iphone game. Next up some further tweaking on the Pandora appstore.
Craigx
and his lack of a Pandora.
I currently don’t have a Pandora here. As soon as my work was done it was sent on to a dev.
When these next cases arrive I’ll have one again and make some new videos.
Craigix
Don’t shoot the messenger!
Update:
The Chinese usually only talk to Fatih – he was in Dubai the last week.
So our latest info was, that the cases should be sent on the 15th – thus we thought they would arrive last week.
Fatih is back since last Friday and he immediately took care of the issue.The Chinese weren’t 100% happy with the cases yet – and they didn’t want to send another intermediate review case, instead they wanted to send one that they think is perfectly ok. This case has been made now and should have been sent on Monday. I’ve prepared a blog post with these infos – I won’t post it before I’m sure, have pictures and a tracking number. This number will be posted publicly so everyone can track those cases.
It really looks like it could be green lighted soon. The Chinese are preparing everything right now – and want to send the MP cases before the Chinese New Year.
If we’d known in advance that the Chinese would mess around like that, we might have get a refund(?) and get the cases produced elsewhere (The price difference, for those interested: We pay 20.000 USD for the moulds in China, but every other company we asked wanted 130.000 minumum. A cost we couldn’t afford). Thank god that we only had the cases produced in China.
Well, we’re hoping for the best. We should be able to make this last step!
Update 2:
The molds cost way, way more than $20k and that doesn’t even factor in the several keymat and A/V cable molds. Wow, maybe if it was only $20k we could have just told them to F off and went somewhere else. Unfortunately we must stay in bed with the devil we know.
See, no reason to “Blame Canada.”
Blame China–! Blame China—!!
Look, it’s this blog entry again.
Oh.
Shit.
I declare war against CHINA!!
You’ll lose…. it’ll be 2 weeks later than you expect it but you’ll lose.
LOL!!!!!!!!
Not now… but 2 weeks later, of course!!!
Did you mean two months?
Well, applied recursively, “later than you expect” can lead you a looong way.
just read this in the forums. Bugger!
China has let us down… yet again.
BAM BAM BAMBAMBAM BAM BAMBAM BAM clickclick click click click clickclickclick
*reloads*
BamBam?
http://www.catshoes.com/Tubes/Cartoons/bambam003.gif
Managed to find the time over the weekend to finish my iphone game. Next up some further tweaking on the Pandora appstore.
Ah, the one month game. I’m actually looking forward to playing it now i have my iphone 3gs
We must go with all 4000 pre-orders and fully loaded development team to China and get them ourself! =)
Yeah, we’ve seen pre-orders travelling to developers, what we need now is developers travelling to manufacturers.
Backtracking the Pandora.
Angry Ticks fly out of my nipples.
I AM A BANANA…..!!!!
The Cake was real. The SPOON was too big.
Did you bring your coat?
There is no spoon…
Why would you use a spoon to eat cake?
Messy Cake.
Silly Hats ONLY.
Just great! Now were basically looking at a May release (hit chinese new year 2+1 weeks, 1 more week to start), then unexpected production/shipping/assembling problems and were quickly hitting may)
It’s like a bad joke, really.
It’s like a bad dream. I can’t imagine what it’s like for craig and co.
Always an excuse and always someone elses fault that the product they took our money for so long ago isn’t ready.
then ask for your money back. WTF
I am really getting tired of this “then ask for your money back” phrase. It’s just not helpful and if everyone took your advice then no one would get a Pandora as the company would go bankrupt!
I can understand his feelings. A post was referred to in a thread on the boards where it was said (by Craig I believe) that the cases were to go into mass production January 15th,2009. So it does kind of beg the question of why it wasn’t until June/July the molds were going to be made, and now we are still waiting for the company to actually make the things.
While the team may be doing the best they can, he is right, so far they have always blamed someone else for the delay and at some point people really start to get stressed.
Frankly, I cannot think of anything else that has had this kind of bad luck, with so much information that is vague and speculative this far along that has people still so devoted to it. So let’s cut him some slack, eh? After all I feel like some of these others, completely and utterly flabbergasted at the luck of this project, yet I too would prefer not to ask for my money back.
yet, it does always remain a possibility without it being suggested as much as it has been (even by Craig the other day to someone)and like it or not I’m afraid that with each passing week, more and more people are getting ready to do just that and maybe you and I won’t ever get one.
And his original whiney post was more useful than a ‘take your money back’ post? If it’s ok for him to express his frustration with the delays, then it’s ok for others to express frustration with whiners that won’t shut up.
It goes both ways.
Sounds more like a “reason” than an “excuse”. And yes, it is, at least this time, somebody else’s fault – what’s you point?
“Taken much quicker”?
I agree. Terrible english, I’ll fix it.
Even better, I’ll take it out. That whole paragraph is too opinionated anyway.
Somebody remind us why Chinese facilities were chosen again?
There are a lot of automotive suppliers along I-94 between Lansing and Detroit who do nothing but specialize in rapid prototyping of plastic parts. When I worked at Ford Engineering we used some of these suppliers to give us test parts for everything. We got everything from plastic bumpers all the way down to the stupid little plastic buttons on your dashboard. Turn around time was 24 to 48 hours and they were always eager to hope that the prototype would turn into a multi-million dollar order. My point is these kind of folks need the business and they have the ability to get the job done now.
If the Chinese supplier for the case is still jerking us around, it might be worth it to give the engineering drawings to some of these outfits and see what they can do with them. Given the proximity of Detroit to MWeston this whole shipping / turn-around time for acceptance can be shrunk quite a bit.
I’m really surprised that MWeston doesn’t have any confirmation the package was shipped. If it were me, I’d be all over the supplier to give me ALL the pertinent info on the shipping so we could track it.
I’ve seen companies go from concept to almost finished prototypes overnight.
I imagine it’s because they’re very, very, very cheap.
The problem is, American companies are too expensive. Thats just a fact: Detroit has out-priced itself from the competition. If American manufacturing wakes up and realized it *HAS* to compete on the basis of price and not just cultural-background, there might be a chance .. but I don’t think so otherwise.
The problem lies in the “multi-milion dollar order” you speak of. That won’t happen with the Pandora. (Well maybe it will, but without Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft behind it, nobody will bet on it). Since they have no hope to amortize the cost of the moulds, they charge for it. At this game, only the Chinese are cheap enough. No choice.
Another point is that manufacturing companies like this hop to it for a large company like Ford where they get a lot of their business. They tend to take their time with a tiny company. It’s not motivational; it’s organizational.
I work for a company that produces parts made from a certain type of metal. If an order comes in from one of the big customers, and especially if it’s a big order, then it gets prioritized sooner than smaller orders from small customers. It works like this. We get an order for 20,000 lbs, and it gets scheduled to be run on a certain day. Then we get an order for 700,000 lbs. If the company that orders 700,000 lbs. wants it quickly and the order for 20,000 lbs. is in the way, then the order for 20,000 lbs. gets rescheduled for later. It’s pretty unfair, but that’s the way it gets done, because the company cares more that the big order doesn’t go somewhere else than they care if the small order goes somewhere else.
MY understanding is the assembly company refereed the mould company as one they had experience with and positive results.
ED says the molds cost around US$20,000 – wasn’t it said before that they cost around 100,000?
The PCBs were made in China too.
The lie is wearing thinner each day…
ED might be mistaken on that figure. MW says they cost a lot more.
So, who has the right invoice and who signs the cheques?
Close to a Million US$ Outside China:
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/48272-mould-creation-time/page__view__findpost__p__755690
US$100,000 in China:
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/48272-mould-creation-time/page__view__findpost__p__755718
I can only speculate they are not talking about the same thing.
The price for creating the mold and the price to create the mold + produce 10’000 cases. Pure speculation though…. as always.
Now this I think is actually very very good news.
That somehow the pandy folks have found the one Chinese company that is chock full of anal retentive perfectionists is great.
Every other story I’ve heard about Chinese manufacturing is that they don’t give a shit, and it’s extremely rare for their products to actually do what you told them to do.
So, I tip my hat to our Chinese friends, and hope they keep up the good work
It’s not the pre-production that’s the problem.
It’s when they get firm orders and start doing thousands that you’ve got to KEEP ON THEIR FUCKING CASE all the time, this is when they start cutting corners, this is when the airfares should be spent, every week or so of actual production.
It’s just becoming so OLD. as the beastie boys say “get it together”
So Pandora is going to be a retro-console in more than one sense.
could we please forget about theses next thursday delay, it’s always wrong, Op should start to understand that everything takes at least 1 month or even 2 when working overseas…
Sooo, the name of this post can only confirm one thing:
the pandora will be able to run Portal!
Only if it is ported
Please kill me x_x
okay
First cancel your pre-order and spend the 300 dollars in a meaningful way.
If there is a next time they should get a Chinese who lives there on board the OP team to supervise this part of the project.
That’s really annoying news. I think I might take a break from reading the boards and news here for a while and just hopefully one day just be suprised with a package delivery.
Keep truckin’!
Wish it wasn’t called the AppStore… can’t we think up something more original?
Someone suggested “Box” a while back, as in “Pandora’s Box”
I agree. Apple’s iPhones have “apps” and an “AppStore.” I think the Pandora’s market site should be more original than a copy of someone else’s idea — the Pandora is a unique device, after all. If I wanted an iPhone, I wouldn’t have pre-ordered a Pandora.
unsuprised dissapointment
pained resignation
like a beaten wife of many years.
That’s not really a fair comparison. Something hasn’t been done against us that we’ve woefully accepted, it’s a lack of something. Closer analogy would be taking a crap job being told a promotion would be right around the corner, a promotion that never comes.
I think a haiku should usually be 5-7-5…
It seems that a positive reaction to the latest news is rare, so here I am, thankful for EDs info and optimistic
Your a better man than me Mali.
justified or not to me this just says… AFTER CHINESE NEW YEAR. MAYBE WE WILL GET SOMETHING IN APRIL… or not.
who knows? I am really dissapointed but will continue to have faith that the team are doing their best and will continue to show that by investing my money with them(eg not asking for it back)
A sad person
True, but ED is always optimistic, it’s his nature.
yeah I am not upset by this news either. Don’t bag on the Chinese, they are doing a good job. You peeps need to stop whinging and start doing something useful like writing games, earning money to pay for extra Pandoras, etc.
Anyone else noticed how these problems always turn up around the end of the month? Just when “only two more months” would turn into “only one more month”, things get delayed by a month again.
The case was a lie
Oh come on, somebody had to say it.
Waiting is killing me…
Since I pay for a pandora, my girlfriend had been pregnant and now I’m a father…
But the perfect case need that time so let’s wait and see. Hopefully I got friends and liquors to spend my time with !
Congratulations!
Well, it looks like your kid will get brand, new Pandora, right on time, when he grow up. Or two month later…
I was eyeing the Pandora but my Fiance told me I could upgrade my computer monitor and she wouldn’t mind as much. So OLD 19″ CRT is going to someone else and hello 24″ 1920 X 1200 LCD! So I will get the Pandora later…..well definitely after its actually manufactured. I do have some advice for you first batchers “Stick in there” It will be well worth it to wait it out.
Mr Fatih – we love you long time…
One thing I’m confused about is, didn’t Craigix imply he had a tracking number? How could he have one if they hadn’t shipped?
Oh no. Craig said that he hoped the cases would be here last week and that he hoped we’d have some photos today. Nothing more m’lud.
Craig just dropped meaningless one-liners as usual and the rest was speculation
this is the only blog i know that has mostly bad news…
Frak man! You owe me a new keyboard. I swear I laughed for a good two minutes at that. How true that is. XD
We do have Faith in Fatih
But,Oh Shit : the Gorgonzola is killing me !
MY ANUS IS BLEEDING !
These delays no longer bother me it’ll be done when it’s done. You can’t rush perfection, or the chinese for that matter,lol
. Atleast it’ll be finished sometime this year.
You had to say that, didn’t you
You’re just tempting fate.
Or two moths later…
Ironicaly, I promise Pandora to my son for his birthday… I didn’t say which one. I hope it will be this year. Oh, kids can wait, anyway…
So how pissed off would everyone be if the Pandora sucked nuts when it was finally released? I’m not saying it will and expect it not to but our expectations are insanely high and keep getting higher the longer we wait. It probably has to be perfect to not disappoint now.
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The problem lies in at the rate at which the Chinese drive. It takes them forever to just get to the factory. They should just live there like slaves