It's Not The Death Of The Pleo - It's Only The Begining!!

I've been one of the that have recently thought that the Pleo could be a one-hit wonder and that Ugobe may be moving on to other ventures. But the appointment of Nat Southworth as the representative of Ugobe's marketing efforts across Europe then we can be assured that there's more to come.

Martin Hitch, Ugobe’s VP of sales recently said:

"We wanted to enhance our support for both retail customers and distributors across Europe. Working with Nat gives Ugobe and our partners a point of contact in the territory who can make things happen."

Which is all very commercial, but the bit you'll be interested in is what Nat had to say:

"Ugobe are leading the way with product development and 2008 is their break through year."

Then reading PCMag, they did an interview with John Sosoko (Chief Tehnical geezer) who said:

We are working to add capabilities to the firmware so people can have the tools they need to develop new programs. We are also working on new products, taking what we have learned and making the next life form that will be more capable of fulfilling the dream we have of these creations being much closer to a lifelike companion.

Then you see they're starting to hire great minds like Chris Hoover who's joining the Ugobe team as "leading developer relations and evangelism" - cool! This all points toward great things in the future!

But wait, there's more news. I've found out that Ugobe has (it is reported) raised $12.8m to help fund the development of more robots in the future! Awesome!

Bring it on!