So, today marks the end of our crowdfunding campaign, and we couldn’t be happier with the result! Over 2500 people pledged for a PocketSprite. This means we not only made our US$20000 campaign goal, but shot past it by 750%! Obviously, we’re very happy with this result and we’d like to thank you all for chipping in and making our dream of mass-producing the PocketSprite a reality.

So, what is going to happen right now? Well, obviously the PocketSprites need to be produced. As we said in the campaign, most preparations have already been done: the molds are made, the design of the electronics is done, and the basic software is written. This should allow us to crank out the early bird models pretty quickly. We also are preparing the orders for the components of the non-early-bird units, so we can get to work on them as soon as possible as well.

During the campaign, we haven’t been sitting on our laurels either. As you saw in the previous update, the huge success of the crowdfunding campaign also allowed us to add a futuristic-looking transparent case to the already existing stately black variant. On the software side, there is also progress: for all of you people who want to write your own apps and games for the platform, we have an SDK prepared which comes with some nice features like a multichannel sound renderer supporting .wav and .mod/.s3m/.xm files, as well as a tile-based renderer which makes it easy to make extensive graphics using the Tiled tilemap editor. As an indication of how well this works: the small game Fluppy Bird we made is written in less than 350 lines of C-code.

All in all: This crowdfunding campaign is at its end, but the PocketSprite is just getting started! We hope to see many more exciting applications and games for the PocketSprite as the units make it to capable developers. (If you are one: keep an eye on this GitHub repository as we’re soon going to start a contest where the best app or game can win US$1000!) And if you know of a friend who is jealous of your PocketSprite and missed this campaign: they can still place pre-orders right on the Crowd Supply project page. As soon as we have produced all crowdfunded PocketSprites and fulfilled everyones pledges, we will set up shop at PocketSprite.com to continue selling the PocketSprite.