buzz muddleheaded: GameStick Android game console raises $648 thousand, should ...

A month after PlayJam launched a campaign to raise money for a new inexpensive Android-based video game console, the Kickstarter campaign for the GameStick has ended after surpassing the original goal by nearly 648 percent.

PlayJam was originally hoping to get about $100,000 in pledges from backers interesting pre-ordering the $79 game console, but ended up with $647,658 in pledges.

GameStick

That falls pretty far short of the $8.6 million raised by the Ouya team ? another group creating an Android-based video game console. But it does show that there might be room for more than two different consoles designed to let you play Android-based games on a TV.

While the Ouya console is a $99 set-top-box that ships with a wireless gamepad and a custom user interface for downloading and playing games, the GameStick is? pretty much the same thing, but with a different user interface, a different controller, and a stick-shaped game console that has an HDMI port at one end, allowing you to plug the game console directly into your TV.

PlayJam is emphasizing portability with the GameStick. When you?re not using the game console you can actually slide it right into a slot in the gamepad for storage. That means you can carry your game console with you and use it on virtually any TV.

In the future the company also plans to offer wireless display support so that you can play games without even removing the stick from the gamepad and plugging it into the TV.

The GameStick features an Amlogic AM8726-MX ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, a microSD card slot, WiFi, HDMI, and Bluetooth. It runs a customized version of Google Android Jelly Bean.

PlayJam expects to ship the first GameStick units in April. Folks who didn?t get a chance to order one during the Kickstarter fundraising campaign will soon be able to place pre-orders at GameStick.tv.

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