The first real casualty of the economic crisis has emerged, and it’s a lovable robotic dinosaur. Decreased demand for expensive toys has left Pleo’s creator, Ugobe, wallowing in debt. As a last ditch effort to remain solvent, they’re going to try to auction off the rights to Pleo, but there’s no guarantee that the poor critter will ever be made again.
Pleo has always been a favorite over here at CrunchGear, so we put together a little goodbye tribute video in case the adorable robosaurus is indeed extinct.
It actually seems likely that the rights to make Pleo (and the machinery owned over in China) will be snapped up, but if one of the big toymakers does so, they’re under no pressure to continue production. They might wait for the world economy to recover, but they also might just shelve it, knowing they’ve spoiled any competitors’ hopes of capitalizing on Pleo.
Whatever the case, it’s a sad day indeed.
Videos from previous posts and YouTube. Music is Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s “Might as well have a good time” from Daylight Again. A nice smooth yacht-ballad is what Pleo would have wanted.
[image credit: this blog via GIS]
I remember when Biggs took the Pleo for a walk – Crunchies 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jez88kAbcSE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideosearch%3Fq%3Dcrunchies%2520john%2520biggs%26oe%3Dutf-8%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial%26c&feature=player_embedded
I completely get why they went bankrupt.
So it goes…
:(
And there we are, waiting for Pleo 2.
too bad, great product. The AI IP must be worth something.
This is why I will never start a “hardware”based company. Takes far to much money to scale the business.
Yeah, but they had problems where the CEO stole money and crap like that…correct? It could have been a good idea, but there were lots of other issues at fault!
CEO stole money??? Please elaborate
The product is not very good. It was a good idea but the execution in manufacturing was poor. The motors made too much noise. Also the UI was pretty difficult to understand. I have one, and we charge the batteries once a month, but we have no idea what to do with the thing. It was a gift.
If they had quickly iterated through 3-5 versions, with a lot of consumer testing, this thing could have been great.
My wife wants one because i showed her the video above. DOH! Looks like a great product and I’m sure the concept will be picked up by someone and moved forward.
if they had this video in their marketing program they probably wouldn’t have gone under
@BrendanBiryla
the AI engine in this thing has got to be worth something. so the hardware is extinct, but the AI Will live.
The product is not very good. It was a good idea but the execution in manufacturing was poor. The motors made too much noise
Anyone happen to have a copy of all the downloads which were available for this thing?
Seems the site is gone already.
Thanks,
Serge
iRobot should develop a roomba in PLEO style that is able to collect LEGO and other tiny stuff, sort it into boxes and clean the room afterwards plus talking with the kids (some surveillance features would be nice too – streaming what it sees to the parents’ computers, mobile phones…).
That would be a success story in all families with small children.
From our observation there’s not much AI in-there. Behavior is pre-scripted. There are some basic variables and counters, but that’s it.
Nevertheless, the thing is cute!
I am quite excited with Pleo as it just recently came into Malaysia with Pensonic bringing them in (at least distribution rights in South East Asia). But as I read this article, I really feel that it’s quite unfortunate to see Ugobe going bankrupt.
Well… at least the good news is that it wasn’t really “dead” yet.
What really SUCKS now is the fact that nobody probably gets to see the SDK that was supposed to come out for this thing. The upcoming SDK was my main motivation to go ahead and buy one.
It would be pretty awesome if they’d at least release what they have now and maybe opensource it but I guess it will now remain a hidden secret forever.
LifeOS had potential and I think that with the SDK many really interesting applications are possible. Just like with any hardware usually the stock software only scratches the surface of what you can achieve with it.
bah…
ha ha ha 3p1c f4i11 http://iamned.com/blog/ what a loser
No Mike, totally wrong. The CEO had nothing to do with it. The CFO was playing with the numbers. What a waste…!