Not impressed with the greed.
Dont get me wrong, I looked at the Pebble time when it was announced and thought "Yep, thats for me" so I pledged / ordered one on day one, just missing the early birds.
Now, when a kickstarter hits a target, its pretty common for stretch goals to be introduced in which more gear / features get thrown into the deal because of all that extra crowdfunded cash. A prefect example is the "exploding Kittens" card game, in which my same order got upgraded from a single deck with NSFW cards, to:
- a full, separately playable NSFW deck
- Carry box for two decks
- Kickstarter exclusive item inside the box for the pledgers.
(All of the above were seperate goals, added after each was completed)
Now, take Pebble Time which as the time of looking was at 12.7 MILLION dollars (of a 500K goal). So far they have announced:
- The Pebble Steel (this was simply a marketing tactic... the design and tooling was already in place)
- Smart straps (which they aren't going to make, or invest in, or design) which use the connector they already have in the watch.
- Anyone who "upgrades" their Pebble Time to the steel version loses their extra discount from being an early bird.
Sounds like they are basically using Kickstarter as a marketing platform, I'm not seeing many rewards to the fans that handed them 25x their target.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
