Gamestick rakes in Kickstarter cash in 30 hours

PORTABLE ANDROID GAMES CONSOLE, the Gamestick has already raised its $100,000 target and has crashed onwards beyond $150,000.

The console hit Kickstarter this week with big talk about a small device. The Gamestick is a games console small enough to fit inside its own controller, but good and powerful enough to give people a decent gaming experience on an HDMI television.

It managed to raise its target of $100,000 in just thirty hours and this afternoon broke the $150,000 barrier.

Thank you! You've taken us to $150,000 so far. Let's see how soon we get to $200k. A photo to prove our excitement: ow.ly/i/1ksk1

— GameStick (@Game_Stick) January 4, 2013

The people behind it are happy, naturally, and have added more features in the form of support for open source media player XBMC and streaming system DLNA to their console.

"The response from the Kickstarter community has been truly overwhelming. We are confident in our product and what we hope it will mean for gaming but we were taken aback at how quickly the message was adopted," said Anthony Johnson, CMO of Playjam.

"While we are shipping as a dedicated games console, we are keen to ensure that users have the ability to hack the device if they so wish and will be providing support for XBMC & DNLA via an optional firmware update in September. We encourage users to hack the device - the time for closed, proprietary systems is ending which bodes well for true innovation."

The Gamestick will finish funding on 1 February and the developers reckon that they will start shipping to consumers in April. It reckons that the console is about 90 percent complete now. µ