At the time of typing this, the goal was dropped to $50k USD (from $56k), extended the campaign to January 30th, and is 99% funded.
I know, reddit bad, but the creator is active in the r/SteamDeck discord server if anyone has questions.
Edit/update: project is now fully funded!!!
But I don’t get it. How many steam decks have been sold in Europe? How can that not be a market for them? Getting the CE label later may work out, but don’t they need the money now?
It takes money to make money. The whole project is a bit of a gamble. While paying for CE certification would probably pay off if this thing got popular, if it flops as a whole, then it would flop even harder.
Basically, because it costs more to do, it’s an even bigger gamble. Even though it could work out, they must’ve done the math and said, hmmm, let’s wait and get some legs under us first.
Heck, interest stalled out already and they barely made their funding. I feel like everyone who was gonna buy one, in the US anyway, has bought one. So how much bigger would Europe be for them? And how much does it cost to get CE certification? I don’t know the answers to these questions. But it’s foggy enough that I can see why they might not want to do it just yet.
For the record I bought one 🤷♂️
Gonna pop in here…I had to respond to this one cuz out of all the posts I see on the internet, you actually have most of it sorta right.
It’s not a numbers game like you’re thinking, I could have made the goal 1/2 that and still shipped it, the money it cost to develop it is already spent. I didn’t throw $50k at manufacturing hundreds cuz that was not the intent. Crowd Supply was mostly a tool to gauge interest, the funding goal is basically arbitrary in this case. It had quite a few subscribers before it launched so that number was just a guess.
Realistically, I just made the thing to make it…I was on a modding kick and what fun is it if you can’t be the first one to do something? People were asking about it, I already have a small business focusing on other things but I have other gaming stuff I’ve designed that only wound up in my own stuff so I figured this one might be worth putting out there. The original intent was just to hustle it in enthusiast circles like a mixtape. It wasn’t necessary for it to be a massive hit. Besides that, I’m not a big name in the modding scene and the Youtubers I reached out to ignored it. It’s doing OK considering I’m the only one who shilled it publicly.
As for CE…yeah you pretty much got it right. Anyone who “self certifies” an EMC directive for CE without like $20k in test equipment is just BS’ing it unless it’s all low speed stuff. Labs are very expensive. I was never really trying to go after the whole world with it off the jump but I get emails about CE every day, then I get comments like this on my Youtube videos:
Look how happy that guy is. Some people really want the thing. It makes me feel bad to turn people down about the CE thing so I went back and haggled the lab and it worked out, now it will be CE marked. I don’t even have to make all my money back on the lab testing, that guy’s gonna get one…hopefully he’ll say nice things about it and we’re all happy.
Down the road, maybe there’s an install service for people who just don’t want to do it themselves, maybe we’ll throw some extra RAM in there while we’re at it. The thing didn’t have to do big numbers, it just had to make sense…it already makes sense. Plus I’ve developed tools for this, my software buddy has cut his teeth on it, it opens doors to other things as long as they seem to make sense.
Hey thanks for the write-up!
Glad I had it kind of almost correct 😬 Sorry if I implied that you weren’t popular enough to make it work. I really was just guessing based on the numbers and a vague idea of “I guess he needs x amount of money to make it happen.” I’ve been burned on a couple kick starters, so I was a bit pessimistic on what might constitute “success”.
I really do like the project, and my buddies kid heard about your project and bought it as well, he found it organically by himself, I was amazed.
I’m glad you’ve taken this personal project and put it out into the world. I’m excited to get my kit, I bought a clear shell and I plan to leave my LCD in the old shell, so I don’t rush destroying it.
An install service is a nice idea, to give more people access. But that also sounds like a lot of work, depending on how popular it is.
I’m fairly handy with a heat gun and soldering iron. I’ve kicked around the idea of the RAM increase, but I’m not convinced the performance boost is worth the effort and risk.
Anywho thanks again! Looking forward to more cool stuff from your way!
Well I think Crowd Supply doesn’t really do enough to distinguish itself from Indiegogo and Kick Starter. Crowd Supply is basically a distributor that helps thing get kicked off with crowd funding. The thing needs to be pretty much working before it launches so I don’t see how there’s much room for vaporware. I haven’t really read about any of those scams coming out of Crowd Supply.
As for the RAM mod, it starts to make a bit more sense at 1080P. You’ll never get close to using 32gb, but you can run over 16gb fairly easily if it’s available. There are plenty of games that will run at 60fps at 1080P medium, like Doom Eternal. 32gb isn’t really necessary but if you’re into mods, it is worth doing if you don’t spend a lot on it.
I definitely would not attempt to do a RAM upgrade without a preheater. I guess there’s people that get away with just a heatgun, if your a pro and have an expensive heat gun you probably can. I’ve seen a lot of people attempt it and tear up the pads though. It’s far less risky if you can keep the board on a preheater.
I didn’t know that about crowdsource, I definitely thought it was just another of the same. Glad to hear it isn’t.
I didn’t think about the increased resolution making the RAM increase more relevant.
Good note about the preheater, I honestly haven’t looked deeply into the procedure. Looks like you can get into a crappy preheater on Amazon for not too much. For a one off thing its not so bad 🤷♂️
Good summary. Guess there are two ways to look at it. I hope they make it so I can buy one.
Thanks, I hope you can buy one too. Is this something you could buy and have forwarded to you?
If you need a US address, and someone to forward it to you, feel free to PM me 👍
The only cred I have on here is from a guy I met in Canada to sell some phones to. But I promise I’m trustworthy haha
Thanks, but that would be a lot additional shopping feed. I will just wait
They just announced EU/UK availability!
OK, that was much faster than expected :) But 181$ for the anti-glare screen ಠ_ಠ