Kickstarter

Hi everyone, this is a backer-only post, because it primarily involves backers. We don’t want announcements in regards to you all, to be a shock to you all.

Later this week, we’re announcing our first hardware deal - and later this month, our first hardware. It’s a big change for Console, and it’s going to change what we do.

We still hope to make Console OS. But as Jide and Remix OS have found, it’s not a very profitable business. Millions of downloads, doesn't always mean millions in funding. Had they reached out to us, we would have told them that from the get-go. Between Google entering the PC space with Android, and Intel backing away from Android on PC - after we couldn’t stop development of Console OS… it’s a painful double-whammy.

Worse, Google isn’t bringing what you all want to the PC space. They’re bringing Chromebooks that run Android apps, not true Android. So, there’s still room for us, but it may not be in offering a PC OS for existing computers.

In the wake of those post-campaign changes, to make Android work well on the PC, we had to focus on specific devices - battle test and tune them. It’s the only way after we lost the Android-IA kernel for PC hardware.

Again, we may keep building Console OS, and we expect to at least step up to Marshmallow this summer.

So, what’s going to happen to us?

For backers, we’re going to give you choices. More choices the better we do. We did state the risks, and people chose to back us accepting those risks. Intel’s decision to discontinue Android-IA upstream was a risk that we ran into.

Today, we can say that initially, all backers will receive discounts offers on our upcoming hardware - for much more than you backed on Kickstarter. We still expect to ship the remaining perks to a few hundred backers still pending.

But, we will also say this. If this pivot is successful, and if Console OS doesn’t make sense to build anymore - we’ll give you all refunds. Even after shipping all the perks.

Now, those are big ifs. We can’t stress that enough. We’re under no legal obligation to refund people - but if we can, and can keep Console going at the same time, we feel it’s the right thing to do.

Right now, our sole focus has to be on announcing this new hardware. It will give us the funding, and more importantly, the mandate to keep going. But we aren’t going back to Kickstarter. Other companies in this ecosystem have demonstrated an ability to abuse how Kickstarter works, and turn it against us.

We won't be launching any new products on Kickstarter for the foreseeable future, until we're funded enough to resist outside threats and coercion by other companies to our partners. People who fund a project, deserve a better solution - supported by multiple companies working together. We think we have that with our new hardware, so we're excited to try again... while doing the best possible for the backers that got us here.