Colors Done, Extended USB-C: The Last Hurdle
about 6 years ago – Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 01:55:17 AM

A lot of you should be getting Genki this week

I totally empathize with everyone who has had a vague to tracking update, our fulfillment team has been clear with us that there will be a lot of tracking update delays and no one really understands what most of these cryptic postal messages even mean - it can feel like the package is "in transit" forever.  The good news is that packages are moving, the 2% exception there seems to be mostly Germany customs which likes to hold packages for approximately a week it seems.  We've had a few returned packages that we'll have to hunt down in our fulfillment warehouse and many of you lucky people will receive Genki today.  

The Info Received group has dramatically become unstuck since last update and we're very very actively following up with those remaining.  If you've been in transit for over a week, don't give up, seriously most of the comments I see on Kickstarter by the time I reply they've already received it.  Please be patient, we can't really do much on our end besides throw our fist into the sky and curse it and occasionally bug our fulfillment vendor who probably does the same secretly.

As for those lucky enough on the other side of the fence, we've heard a lot of people regretting not getting the dock adapter or the portable stand.  After the holidays when most of the dust has settled and all the shipments out the door we'll start to plan for more longer term warehouse solutions as it doesn't make sense to send out a dock adapter or even a replacement case out globally - it just wouldn't be sustainable so we'll have something up soon but please have some patience in setting this up.  Oh and please share photos of Genki, tag us on Instagram at #genkiaccessories - we love this stuff.

If for some reason you think your order should've shipped but you never received an email we swear Backerkit must be blocked and set as spam for almost everyone - ifyou still don't know where to find your tracking number on your Backerkit page by logging into https://genki.backerkit.com/backer/review and pasting your tracking number in http://humanthings.aftership.com.  If the page doesn't show a tracking number it means we just shipped out your 'other color' category or we're still working on extended heads (more info below)

Someone Requested an FAQ

So I think out of the 3,385 packages that were shipped we had like 10 packages that had become sort of dead on arrival, while most of the troubleshooting can be done with these quick fixes that Andrew has compiled for us with some awesome support from the comments community (shoutout to Mike S):

My Genki doesn't pair - again one of the most popular questions, first thing you have to figure out is how to put your headphone into pairing mode.  It usually involves holding a button on your headphone or charging case till something blinks repeatedly, if you need more details consult your headphone instruction manual or just google "how to pair xyz headphone"

Audio sounds distorted or low volume - this is kind of rare but apparently it's been discovered that some headphones that have the ability to be paired simultaneously to two sources can react like this.  Please disconnect your headphone from other devices (mainly smartphones) to see if that does the trick.  And if its just a volume issue try adjusting the volume on both the Switch and directly on your headphones.

How does latency work - usually codecs tell the whole story about latency but we're starting to find a lot of headphones that inherently have bad latency.  Check your headphones at a site like rtings.com for latency reviews or just google "latency xyz headphone" and you might be able to find a firmware update. aptX-LL will always get you the best results but most headphones with AAC will be just fine.  We've found that the more bells and whistles a headphone has like 3D surround sound or multi-pairing capabilities tend to be more lagged.

There is no audio in docked mode - not sure if most people know this, but the dock actually has 3 USB-A ports, two on the left side and one sandwiched between the HDMI and power port in the back for the dock adapter to go in.  Do not use the USB-C power port for Genki, that will not work.  When you plug it in the upper left side of the screen should show a notification that it's connected to USB audio.

Genki pairs but audio still comes out of the Switch speakers - okay so this one is the ones that are most likely actually broken, the 10 I mentioned earlier.  In a rare occasion it seems like something is coming unsoldered and we've now included an extra quality check step to prevent one of these from slipping into delivery.

If you have encountered this problem, please email [email protected] our awesome engineer will help diagnose and sort things... or if you just want to chat tech but please after the shipments go out.

Colors are Out the Door

 Holy crap, never again are we going to offer custom colors... I mean we thought what could go wrong but it seriously took us a lot longer to pack everyone's colors.  And getting the final the second round of pink buttons still weren't quite right so those were delayed till Wednesday so that they can be assembled and tested - we were packing till Saturday night.

If your part of this color batch we just sent out you'll know that the 3 of us probably worked in collaboration to hand pack your order.  That's 2,153 Genki's for the three of us to pack - and just to be upfront we aren't always perfect and we ended up having to unpack some orders and repack them and it's been a nightmare every time one of you ask for a color change or address change and then trying to match it with the right address and checking it off.  Anyways, best news of the week is that these colors are done and we just shipped them off for fulfillment.  Bear with us as we will get these tracking numbers up as soon as we can.

The Last Hurdle

Anyway, we're going to have to be upfront that if you ordered an extended head we are working our asses off to get them shipped out before the holidays but it probably won't arrive before Christmas.  We had to revamp the PCB to support it and it's been delayed twice and should be coming within 24 hours, then we'll have to assemble it, test it, and pack it into all remaining 884 packages - and then we'll hibernate till the end of the year.

And to my supportive wife Jennifer, sorry for not being able to get back home for our anniversary.  We were supposed to be done by now and now we're crossing our fingers we can make it home by the holidays. She's been a trooper and actually flew in the following weekend to check up and help out in our packing.  You may remember her from the KS video and has been graced upon the frontpage of Engadget and Gizmodo due to Genki madness.

With love and thanks, hope everyone's staying warm and with loved ones for the holidays,

Eddie and Team Genki

Shipping Updates, Colors, Customizations, and Smash Weekend (and Katamari!)
about 6 years ago – Sat, Dec 08, 2018 at 01:52:07 AM

Just a quick update amongst the making, packing, shipping madness.  

First off we shipped out 6,661 packages - or so we thought until my email started exploding everyday since we shipped.  Unsure what the heck was going on, we purchased an expensive post shipping tracking dashboard management system and well it's given us a bit more insight - sort of.  You can now go to http://humanthings.aftership.com and put in your tracking number there and it'll try to tie all the postal info together.

The good news is that over 5,000 of you will very soon have or already have Genki in your hands.  The bad news is that there's almost 1,500 of you in limbo.  And for those 2,500 of you that haven't received a tracking number you can skip down to the title where it says "Dude, Where is my Tracking Number" 

Delivered - yay this means you have a Genki, 666 in the US (that's a bit ominous), Great Britain 54, Hong Kong 58, Taiwan 38, Australia 21, France 21, Japan 5, Canada 5, China 2, and only 1 in Singapore, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland.  (these may not add up as this keeps updating). Unfortunately we've also identified 3 defective units so far from those that have received it.

Out for Delivery - hope the 25 of you are home playing Smash Brothers or Katamari Damacy cause it means someone's driving Genki to your home right now.

In Transit - for the majority of you, Genki is on a plane or at an airport headed to 61 countries getting to your local post office for that last mile

Info Received - okay this is where things are a bit hectic and many of you are seeing this as "Sender is preparing item for posting". This number keeps dwindling and it's basically the main bottleneck.  First off please don't freak out, a lot of you are reporting that it's been 10 days etc but these are actually when our vendor Floship filed for the mailing label, they're then sent to us for printing and attached to each of the right packages before getting sent to fulfillment warehouse for shipping.  For those Nov 27th and later don't worry everything is normal.  For the 1,033 of you are from Nov 27 batch that still has this status but they were actually just shipped a few days and should flip status soon (HK Post has said they're a bit backlogged on their systems due to holidays).  For those before Nov 27th it means there was probably some technical difficulty with the mailing label or the packaging that prevented it from being shipped - apparently the post office is getting very frustrated with our fulfillment vendor at the same time. Sorry for the ~60 of you in this mess we're in limbo with you and trying to sort it out!

Exception - 27 of these are stuck in Japan customs, 1 is an incorrect HK address, and 13 of these are UK as "delivery incomplete" and we have no idea why or where they are.  We've also been getting reports that our warehouse is shipping out other people's Kickstarter projects along with ours and getting double taxed so we're trying to figure out who's head to bite off here. 

Failed Attempt - these five orders are flagged as the person not being home or an office being closed during delivery.  Please check your tracking number (4 of you are from Hong Kong, and 1 from Japan)

Pending - honestly we are still trying to get to the bottom of this but it seems to related mostly to something at Singapore Post and affecting mostly Canada and Netherlands.  We think this will go away soon but we'll keep digging to find the root cause.  

Dude, where's my tracking number?

Okay, so for those that don't even have a tracking number that top half of the post was pretty crap to read through so apologies.  So if you're in this bunch hopefully it means you ordered either a color of Genki that wasn't blue/red or grey or had a need for an extended USB-C.  For those Joy-con connoisseurs we think it's definitely worth the wait:

So for those who have a keen eye and have been following your updates you may notice two things wrong with this photo.  First we said we'd do all the ARMS, Splatoon, and Mario colors and second this photo has no pink buttons.  When we first color sampled everything the pink was great but when we got it last week the shade wasn't quite up to our standards - and Chris is pretty picky about these things. 

So this past week we've basically been doing all the colors that don't involve pink including the custom colors.  We expect to get the updated pink buttons today and will be working this weekend to put them together.  We'll aim to have all ARMS, Splatoon, and Mario Red, and custom colors without USB-C extensions out later this week.  

As for USB-C extensions there was a mistake of communication between our PCB vendor, suffice to say we won't get updated boards for this until the 15th.  There are about 850 of you in this bucket and I know this is super disappointing, but this also means we're stuck at the factory at least until then so obviously it's putting an even bigger damper on our holidays as well.  We'll aim to turn them around by the end of that week so they can at least get out before Christmas but it probably won't arrive till after.

Ending on a Happier Note

Those of you were wondering if Genki would work with Smash Brothers music mode where the screen is off and I'm glad to say it does work.  So this means you can stream a ridiculous amount of game tunes to your wireless headphones or even your car stereo (if it has bluetooth obviously).  Anyways, we gotta get back to work, we're limiting ourselves to half an hour of Smash Bros. at most a day.

Also, we got our first Youtube review, it's reached over a quarter million views, check it out:

The title is a bit over-the-top and doesn't even show up if you search Genki or Bluetooth in Youtube, but man it's a pretty sweet video review by Kevin Kenson so we are definitely not complaining.  Also, he mentions how the latency is a bit off when using two headphones, we suspect its because his aptX headphone doesn't support AAC - and Genki chooses the best available codec shared across both (so like you wouldn't have this problem with say two sets of Airpods)

Second Batch and Reflecting on Factory Life
about 6 years ago – Sat, Dec 01, 2018 at 12:33:08 AM

Nothing really prepares you for that first week stepping onto the factory floor to make something for the first time ever. No matter how many MBA classes you’ve taken on operations management, or that fancy six sigma operation excellence certification on the wall, or even all those years spent leading innovation projects at the largest supply chain company in the world. It’s hard to explain why it’s so different, so personal; it’s scary, unpredictable and oh so beautiful.

We’re not a big corporate customer on a rosy “factory tour” - we’re a lean startup with our asses on the workbenches getting our hands metaphorically dirty putting together Genki. We don’t own the factories or have enough orders to make demands so we do what we personally can to move things along in collaboration. This week’s routine has been basically starting work at the factory from 8:30am-10pm 7/days/week assembling Genkis and troubleshooting/improving our manufacturing, packing, sorting, and fulfillment processes. Andrew spends a lot of time with the manufacturing machinery, inside the Faraday cage with the electric and sound testing equipment, and printing lots and lots of mailing labels. Chris spends a lot of time formatting shipping labels for printing (when he closes his eyes all he can see are barcodes), managing and tracking all of our accessory vendors, and managing our massive payments to vendors. All of us spend our time packing… packing and more packing. 

And when I’m not packing? I spend my free moments answering emails, FB/KS/IGG messages, mostly though during the car ride to and from the factory in between calls with shipping and certification companies. If one of my responses seemed grumpy this past week, please don’t take it personally!  It’s EXHAUSTING and a roller coaster ride of emotions - every positive message in the morning from a happy Genki user is so uplifting but man every time someone asks where there Genki is it’s a reminder and a kick in the ass to work harder (and smarter). We have no regrets though! It’s truly a blessing to have this much demand and to know that our work is meaningful albeit delayed due to the monstrous scale it’s grown to. 

Enough About Feelings, Here's the Real Update

If the first 300 packages we sent last week was a sprint, then this week has been an intense marathon to get 5,000 packages out. A lot of the processes that worked for the sprint didn’t work for the 5,000. We had to quickly improve our process as we clearly knew that we were not going to make 5,000 packed and ready to ship earlier this week. We overcomplicated things with the SKUs and just to give you an idea of what the first 5,000 looked like here’s a screenshot of my tracker: 

So you might be asking yourself, what the heck are the factories doing if you're exhausted with doing all this work. Well the truth of the matter is there's way too many variations and factories work best at repeating similar things.  We made a simple spreadsheet with pictures to coordinate production and basically anything with less than 50 quantity we took it upon ourself too do because factories really don't like small batches.  Now, imagine the hardest most impossible level of Overcooked where you have over 9,000 orders in 530 number of combinations. Each Genki has a 6-step manufacturing process and a 3-step testing process. Each accessory also has their own quality check process and then have to be assembled to the right combination attached to the right mailing label. Chris’ girlfriend even flew down to help out and together the four of us were able to pull through despite all the hair-pulling and constant yelling "who's doing the dishes?!" 

So the good news is we've sent out 5,500 Genkis today!  That means we're more than half way through! It's a bit of manual work to get all the tracking numbers in so sit tight. We have some bad news though, we rushed a bit and somehow didn't have documentation for two of our boxes which got stopped at customs so we have some packages that will have to be shipped out early next week with mailing labels reprinted (out of the 900 blue/red combos and blue/red with stand about 200 are affected and our shipping labels have expired so we'll have to work on this over the weekend).  With that said we will send that out with out the remaining 1,000 or so Neon Blue/Red and Grey/Grey Genki's orders out early next week and begin the ARMS, Splatoon, and Mario colorways; we just got the color samples and our eyes are blurry from staring at neon and lack of sleep - the pink one though seems a bit off so we need to do more adjusting. Our goal is to finish everyone’s non-customized order by end of next week and be home well before Christmas for a much needed escape. When you’ve done 8 loads of laundry away from home that’s when you know it’s been too long. 

But before my mind wanders too much into life after shipping, I mentioned that it was a sprint last week and a marathon this week. Next week is going to be more of a Spartan Race obstacle course as we start to tackle many more variations of colors. It’s way less orders but way more combo variations (462!) making it impossible to scale these quantities. When we had the voting sessions for color preferences in a previous update we recorded roughly 4% of you backers wanted custom colors - and at the time we had about 2,000 backers so Chris volunteered to to basically handle what we assumed would be 80 orders manually with just a $2 upgrade to cover his hotel fee. That number for some reason has exploded to 1,400 customized orders which is why it’s all-hands on deck to put these orders together and it’s super hard to promise an exact delivery date but basically we won’t leave till we finish. 

Shipping... Craziness 

So there are two areas where we are noticing postal delays - all of Canada due to postal strikes which have sort of cleared but we hear there are some people blocking trucks and parts of California due to fires. We’re working on a solution for Canada with our fulfillment vendor as they say these strikes may go till February(?!) and that other services will cost $30 per package. If anyone has any bright ideas on how to resolve this best please message us. As for Californians please just wait a few more days. 

Also some of your respective countries are charging you a combination of taxes and import tariffs and we’re sorry about that but we can’t really report these as gifts especially when we're sending out quantities of 5,000 at once - as a startup we can't risk an audit or get blacklisted at customs. For those that are having issues with us over-declaring the value that’s caused by how the Backerkit system reports value so if that’s the case we’ll take responsibility of any tax portion that’s reported higher if needed - but please give us a breather to do it after we get through the shipments.  We've fixed most of this for the upcoming UK deliveries based on feedback in the comments. 

For Those Who Have Genki Already 

Hey, we seriously love the awesome reviews popping up all over the web.  Most of you are enjoying Genki trouble free but we've had a few common concerns as well so I’ll try to address them here: 

Having trouble with pairing?

Without an independent screen it can be sometimes difficult to know what’s grabbing the pairing connection so the first time may be difficult. First thing to check is if you know how to properly put your device into discovery/pairing mode (google your brand as it’s usually holding a button down for a few seconds). Also sometimes it helps to make sure you’ve “disconnected” it from your smartphone Bluetooth settings (you don’t need to unpair it). Some smart televisions are known to grab Bluetooth connections and hold them hostage sort of speak. If you have issues pairing try to turn off other Bluetooth devices except for the device you're pairing for the first time and it should be easy to connect afterwards. We saw this issue when we were like in an Bluetooth headphone section of an audio store and it’s just crazy trying to figure out what’s trying to pair. 

Seems to be latency?

So Genki can only be as fast as the latency of your headphones, we'll always support the fastest path. The lowest latency codecs are aptX-LL and aptX and we know these are rare but we also support the AAC which is what most of today’s popular headphones support and still get a very fast 90ms (if you see other transmitters below Bluetooth 4.0 they don’t support AAC). Best way to tell what your headphone supports is this site at https://www.bluetoothcheck.com. If your headphones support AAC and you still feel there is latency then it may be caused by other features in your headphone such as noise cancelling. Best to Google to see if others report latency with your pair of headphones (and also compare it with the latency you get from your smartphone).

Broken case? 

So we know a few of our cases are getting broken in shipment due to a combination of the portable stand being pretty heavy and the brutal treatment of freight from postal workers. We’ll figure a way to replace those who encounter this unfortunate issue but it’ll likely have to be after the holidays. 

Something else still wrong?

Hold both buttons for 8 seconds and unplug Genki to reset the device to factory settings.  If all else fails, shoot us an email at [email protected] and we’ll help you troubleshoot or get a replacement as soon as possible. (Please don’t email Backerkit support, you'll just get confusion) 

A Minor Plea to Those Eagerly Waiting 

We know everyone wants to know what batch they’re in and it seriously takes us about 5 minutes to match your name to something on Backerkit (especially since there’s no wifi in the factory and bad signal), then match that with what’s been packed, and then coordinate with the fulfillment to track the status. While yes I mainly respond during breaks but man I could’ve packed another two orders too. So please please just a little patience - I know everyone has awesome trips coming up! 

No More Changes, Really This Time!!! 

On a serious note is that we seriously get on average 5 address change requests a day now and we haven’t been able to handle these anymore since this last weekend. I know it's our fault for a late shipment but we have to draw the line.  Literally our contact at Floship (our fulfillment vendor) worked with us super crazy hours, even heading back to the office at 3am working till 5pm last Saturday!) to get our labels processed in time because of all the last minute changes. We can’t do this anymore it’s causing way too many uncertainties and delays. All the labels have been paid and prepped for even if it hasn’t shipped. And also we keep getting requests to change colors in hopes to accelerate their shipping order and seriously we can’t anymore! 

For Those Who Want More Add-ons

We’ll try to figure a process out after the holidays to help those who are loving Genki and want to add a dock adapter and/or kickstand. 

Nerding Out on Bluetooth Certification 

So we're now officially Bluetooth certified and can check out our shiny page here. Oh and if you hear anyone suggest that Nintendo is gonna include Bluetooth audio someday, rest assured and point them to the listing for the Nintendo Switch and find that it's not registered for "Advanced Audio Distribution Profile" or A2DP. 

Anyway I'm super backlogged in messages and I'm too tired to proofread this post.  I need to clear some headspace as my wife is flying in tonight to so I can get hopefully have spend some quality rest time before jumping back in Saturday afternoon to fix those constantly occurring shipping hurdles. 

Thanks for listening,
Eddie and the Genki Team

(oh and tracking numbers will be emailed over the weekend it's more manual than it should be)

Ship, Ship, Hooray!
about 6 years ago – Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 01:31:12 AM

Happy Pokemon Day!

After a few rounds of test production I can happily say we’ve cleared the fog and are indeed ready to ship. These past months have been nothing short of brutal for the team - myself, Chris, and Andrew have been holed up in an Airbnb together working closely with our five factories to see this through. It’s been worth it though, we’ve learned so much about the manufacturing ecosystem, refined and improved Genki, and have formed tighter relationships that will definitely help speed things along with our future endeavors.

So now that manufacturing is chugging along we have been all-hands on deck for logistics. Today we were on the ground packing and shipping out our first batch which will put our logistics to the test; we’re shipping a total of 286 Neon Blue and Neon Red Genkis along with their their accessories to some of our Day 1 backers across 10 countries including Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. 

Our second batch is scheduled to be completed on the 26th which should net us another ~5,000 units to cover most of the standard Nintendo Switch Neon Blue/Red and Grey units. And the remainder we should be able to at least finish production by the end of November (however sorting and packing all the unique custom colors and extended versions may take some extra time that’s harder to forecast). Please note we can’t really change orders or addresses without delaying your shipment at this point.

Okay so we missed the 🚢

So to rewind things a bit, a lot has happened since last update. Looking back it seemed a bit naive that we would finish soon after that last post as our test production turned up a lot of things that required us to go back and rework the process - making one was easy but a consistent quality for hundreds and thousands well... let's just say the first production wasn't as good as we expected from our late stage prototypes.

As soon as we figured out the best way to scale the PCB production - we hit our first major hurdle and our test batch was completely rendered useless because the PCB supplier somehow messed up and sandwiched someone else’s PCB into ours. So we have a really complicated 4 layer PCB and one of those layers somehow came from someone else's product - which means a lot of wasted silicon and production time. It’s like when you order a Club Sandwich (turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato) and somehow they mess up and put someone else’s anchovies instead of the bacon in your sandwich… and it ruins everything 🥪🤢

But alas there were a few other issues. With the cases we ended up having to tweak the mold to hold the items tighter.  We also refined the case design and reflected all the shiny new certs we've collected. You’ll be happy to know we’ve taken the time (and money) to get properly Bluetooth SIG certified - this is a reason why cheaper bluetooth devices actually don’t label their products with the official Bluetooth logo. You can be sure Genki is reliable, safe, compatible, and best performing.

As for the stands we also had our share of headaches with consistency and decided it best to scrap the first production and Chris went in to basically revamp the whole production process and develop an entirely new batch. Oh and I just want to remind you how slick they are, check out how you can just pinch two sides for it all to slide back in place!

 We’ve enrolled with Floship as our fulfillment partner who have a tight integration with Backerkit which means your order tracking will be in sync - look forward to an email from Backerkit which should provide you access to a tracking number upon shipment. Our original intention was to ship non-Day One and Earlybird backers using a freight cargo ship but we really don’t want anyone to miss out on Smash Brothers or even dare risk shipments arriving post-Christmas so we’re basically flying every individual order rather than a hub-and-spoke which will cost us significantly more but it ensures everyone can enjoy Genki for the holidays.

Production Sneak Peek

We don’t want to ruin the unboxing experience for you but here’s a look into what’s going on behind the scenes:

Random Nice Things to Know

So we’re super excited that Youtube is on the Switch, now that means you can enjoy video binging with a loved one. With two pairs of headphones is a game changer during long commutes and waiting.

For those that have been wondering, what else can Genki plug into? Well with the new iPad Pro USB-C port this means you can also enjoy Netflix for 2 on the go conveniently with Genki! It’s not quite what we designed it for but works wonders.

Outstanding Backerkit Surveys

We still have 125 backers who haven’t finalized their Backerkit survey so we don’t know what color, add-on, or even what address to send to. If you’re reading this and don’t remember selecting colors or adding an address do so now please (and no custom color or extensions at this point, sorry). You should be able to find your survey at http://genki.backerkit.com - we know some of you have old email accounts linked to Backerkit which you haven’t checked - or maybe it’s in your spam box - either way please try to get this filled in.

It’s October Already?!
over 6 years ago – Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 02:35:58 AM

Let’s start with the biggest question on everyone’s mind...

Manufacturing Update

After four rounds of mold refinement we can honestly say we're quite satisfied with our latest production test of Genki. There is however a noticeable failure rate with the placement of the USB-C ports into the middle of the board - most ports are placed on top of a board for easy pick-and-place manufacturing, but would make our product much thicker and/or asymmetrical. We've tracked down a vendor who can setup a tool to automate this with a much higher success rate and should be up and running again next week.

The dock adapter has finished production and works flawlessly. We received our third sample of the portable stand and the factory is beginning production while we do a bit of fine tuning of the exterior finish.

We have also been testing our mics on Fortnite and they’re all ready and good to go (the sound waves coming from the speaker icon indicate this) - we spent 4 hours testing a thousand mics and all of them worked functionally with only 3 of them having slight physical defects. And finally, our slick case is being fine tuned to securely fit our production units (as opposed to prototypes) and should be quick to manufacture.

Taking some time to reflect..

So for those that are eagerly waiting - we did indeed initially set a targeted ship date for October for Day One and Earlybird backers. And for those of you that did back first day you’ll know that we’ve come a long way since we first launched on Kickstarter with the following additional features:

• Developed a USB-C power passthrough port (this caused a complete PCB revamp and more than doubled components)
• Built and included a free mini microphone to support games with built-in voice chat (e.g. Fortnite)
• Created a unique game case as packaging for all components
• Slimmed down Genki by more than 13% to be more portable and fit in game case 
• Redesigned the portable stand to better support multiple angles and the new passthrough charging and game case thickness
• Added 48 new color combinations (we should’ve been more conservative here, there are now over 500 unique package combinations we need to pack/ship)
• And maybe a few other surprise bonuses? ;)
• Developed a USB-C power passthrough feature (this caused a complete PCB revamp and more than doubled components)

There were also a few hurdles along the way that we feel would be considered beyond our control:

• Natural disasters: four typhoons, including the largest one in over 40 years, Typhoon Mangkhut, have impacted our supply chain, shutting down factories for days and delaying component shipments
• Week-long national holidays: despite planning for this, we had anticipated finishing manufacturing before this - but with new features we ended up in this dead time between Oct 1-7
• Trade wars: so it’s all over the news about tariffs, and since we’re working with Qualcomm, global chipset shipments have decreased, making it more expensive and difficult to source in quantity
• Over demand: though we're not going to complain!

So what does this all mean? 

For some of our early backers we may be a little late for October shipment (which seriously pains us). For those targeted for November, we are still on track. We should have some units ready by the end of October but likely not enough for every one of our early backers. So naturally the next questions is “Will I be in the October batch?” And unfortunately we don't have the answer yet until we can confidently confirm the quantity of each items we can review before the end of the month - but our plan is to go by the order backer number (first come first serve) without color/extension customizations. Also specific certification for wireless devices in certain regions like Japan and Taiwan may take an extra week or two. We’ll keep the updates more frequent as we learn more.

I know this last paragraph may leave the community divided and all we can ask is for your patience. For every Kickstarter that is delayed there is also another one that rushed out defective products - its a delicate balance. We’ve invested a lot of additional effort in development and testing since we launched this project and I’m incredibly proud of our team in getting as far as we are today; Genki has really evolved into a much better product thanks to every one of you.

We’re taking this very seriously and have all moved together into an Airbnb together to manage every one of our five suppliers more closely - we've only had time to play one round of Super Mario Party, really! We want to ensure what we send out is quality and we want to be very thorough in our quality check before sending Genki out to the world. As one of our backers Nicolas reminded us of a quote: 

Tokyo Game Show

Speaking of games, Genki was shown at Japan’s largest video game conference! We dazzled the crowds and somehow managed to get attention from some pretty impressive press mentions including Engadget Japan and Gizmodo Japan and even snuck in a conversation with the Big N. 

The good news is that beyond demoing it to the Japanese crowds I was able to meet some of our backers and global indie developers in person which was amazing. The bad news is somehow in the process I destroyed my phone in water despite being waterproof. Luckily, we were able to recover a small video that I shared with the team earlier but most of my photos have been lost (I am devastated). 

So besides all of the indie developers loving Genki, I wanted to share my thoughts on each of these wonderful games :)

Super Cane Magic Zero (Italy) - this game was demo’d with Genki during the whole show to demonstrate the dual pairing and I really can’t wait for this funky game to come out. It’s a 4-player comedy adventure game with a bunch of odd-ball puzzles and an awesome aesthetic that reminds me a bit of Scribblenauts and is coming out later this year.

The Gardens Between (Australia) - this game launched while I was in Japan and was featured on the Nintendo Direct for good reason, its a beautiful short adventure that really trigger the nostalgic feels. You go through these dream like environments with the ability to control time, but what really brought this game to life was when you put on headphones (which the game reminds you to do) to bring out the beautiful ambient soundtrack that is unfortunately lost in the built-in speakers.

Super Dodgeball Beats (Spain) - This is what happens when the most unlikeliest mash-up comes together - a funky music rhythm and dodgeball fighting game. I was fortunate to catch-up with the lead artist who gave us the thumbs up - Genki doesn’t skip a beat even in music games. Comes out next year!

Zen Bound 2 (Finland) - I first played the original Zen Bound on iPhone and must say its come a long way and feels great on the Switch with the Joy-Con gyro. The music is some of the most relaxing soothing and always puts me in a meditative trance. A great game to unwind after a few intense Smash sessions. This is out already on the eShop!

Tokyo Dark Remembrance (Japan) - Fellow Kickstarter project Tokyo Dark has created a cool murder mystery interactive novel with really innovative controls for the genre and a matching bone-chilling soundtrack. I can’t wait to dive into this one coming Winter 2018.

Ibb & Obb (Netherlands) - So cool that one of our backers actually stopped by to visit us and surprise us with his game. I’m all for more 2 player co-op games in tabletop mode with Genki and this definitely scratches the itch. The world is divided by a line where the gravity flips on each side, it’s a cool puzzle platform that keeps you on your toes as you bounce and fall through portals together. Coming out later this year!

So yeah, there’s definitely an awesome library of games coming to your favorite Bluetooth headphones paired to the Switch.

Thanks for making it to the end!

Eddie, Chris, and Andrew