By Nelson Schneider - 04/23/16 at 03:02 PM CT
April 2016 is almost over, and I have been waiting with bated breath for more news about the much-delayed Sixense STEM motion controller – the wireless, VR-ready successor to my beloved Razer Hydra. Unfortunately, no news was forthcoming, and in the case of hardware/software development, no news is usually not good news.
I emailed Steve Hansted, Sixense’s Business Development Director and sender of STEM update emails, and asked him what was up. Here’s the reply:
“Late last year, the STEM System passed all the required FCC tests with good margins and is now ready to enter into production (details below). But, as the final engineering and testing took longer than we had originally anticipated, we’ve missed our scheduled production slot. The current schedule from our CM (contract manufacturer) has STEM Systems coming off the line and starting to ship at the end of this month (author’s note: April 2016).
It’s been a long ride, obviously longer than anticipated and you’ve been very patient with us; we sincerely appreciate this and ask that you hold on just a bit longer. We believe that the wait will be worth it.
We’ll be sending out another update with more specific shipping information, but it is anticipated that we will have all the pre-orders shipped by late Q2, early Q3. If your need is time critical, I’ll let you know that we are currently shipping Devkits. If you’d like more information on these, please let me know. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
The “details below” Steve’s email mentioned include a number of graphs showing the technical performance of the final revision of the STEM, and are only of interest to developers (and thus, I won’t be sharing them here). Of more pertinent interest to prospective STEM owners, the hardware will come with a suite of demo software, including archery, swordfighting, shooting, and… golf.
Since I pre-ordered my STEM unit in October 2014, I can’t help but wonder where I am in the shipping queue. If these units are supposed to start shipping within the next week and finish around the end of August or the beginning of September, it leaves a pretty big window, and I could theoretically be stuck STEM-less for the entire Summer. Again!
