Unfortunately, since the early units shipped, communication has been light from Mozilla. Upon checking my email yesterday, I found a message from Kickstarter "Project Update #16: Matchstick - The Streaming Stick Built On Firefox OS by Matchstick.tv". My first thought? "Great, it's February, I should be getting my shipping confirmation soon!" My hopes were immediately dashed upon opening this email, as the subject inside was "February Update: Product Delay, Hardware, DRM, Content, and more!"
This is the start of their update:
Hello Matchstick Fans!We’ll cut to the chase; Matchstick is not going to ship in February.It’s been a very busy couple of months and we’ve had to make some hard decisions about how to move forward. We’ve decided to release the product when it is ready, and anticipate that to be in August 2015. Let us explain more.
There is more to it, and I'll touch on what the "delays" hope to accomplish. To read the rest of this, along with some backer comments, please go here. Some of the user comments may run a little blue.
There were a few points made in the rest of the message. They hope to be able to add more content providers to the device. They have to work in some DRM (Digital Rights Management) in order to appease some of the content providers. They are looking to release devices with a quad core, vs dual core processor. They want to update the software to go with the updated hardware.
I was a backer to this project. This is not my first crowd-funding project for which I have supported. It won't be my last,. I understand that delays can happen. At the point in time when I actually receive my devices, I intend to give a fair and thorough evaluation on the product, itself. It will now have a new category in the eval: "Worth the wait?"
The thing that stands out the most to me here, though is the timing. Days to weeks before the items were supposed to ship, they release this notice? In the afternoon on a Friday? Bad form, there Mozilla. During the funding period communication was great. Unfortunately it died off following completion. However, the update from CES 2015 indicated no problems. In fact, the product was demonstrated at CES last month with talk of weeks to delivery.
I find it hard to believe that the inability to deliver on time was truly a last-minute surprise. This should have been known for some time. It should also have been communicated with project backers. Development for newer hardware should have been on the drawing board, but should have waited until an evaluation of the success (or failure) of this project. It appears that instead of going into production, as promised, production is being delayed, with a tentative release point 6-7 months after initially projected. If the devices were not in production, this could very easily have been communicated. Slight delays are understandable
This project had a goal of $100,000. In the time it was open, it raised over $470,000. This was, according to early communications, enough to fund the project and add two bonus features that were slated as a later update. Things were all going good until February 6.
I'm disappointed on several levels here. I've worked with Mozilla's products for many years, and I expected better from them than what appears to be a last-minute decision to skip Matchstick v1, and use the funds raised for a future Matchstick v2. This could have been handled so much better.
