Believe it or not, it’s actually quite hard to take an idea from concept to render to prototype to production. Sure, inside Microsoft you can do it in a couple hours (if they don’t assassinate the project), but what if you’re just a group of guys who want to put together a really awesome open-source handheld game console? We’ve had our eye on the Pandora for a long time, but the project has been stricken with delay after delay. What’s the deal?
The full story can be found in this interview over at MaxConsole, but the gist is that they underestimated the amount of time it takes to go from prototype to production. They had the final spec ages ago but with several thousand orders the only way they could do it was via Chinese factories, which are apparently taking forever. Like they put in the order in October forever.
Still, the project is very much alive and if you haven’t looked into it yet, now’s your chance. This thing looks like pretty much the ultimate retro gaming handheld, and it’s got a full Linux-based OS as well, so you’ll have a whole bunch of apps and games to choose from aside from emulated ones. We hope to hear from these fellows as soon as they start shipping. You can pre-order ’em here.