UK Price - Surely Not £250

There's a couple of news reports including The Manchester Evening News, The Mail, Metro and Marketing Week that the Pleo will be priced at £250 for the UK, I hope this is just Chinese Whispers.

I'll try and get clarification for you all.

Slight Delays

We've heard from the PR company managing the below the line campaign for Ugobe - the makers of the "Pleo Robotic Dinosaur". They've mentioned that Ugobe will be offering the Pleo for pre-order in the first quarter of 2007 in the US but don't have confirmed details for an international launch.

I'm sure they're waiting for everything to be perfect, and although they'll be finiancial incentives to launch ASAP in the short-term, I'm confident Ugobe are looking to create a long-term brand with Pleo so would want to get it right from the outset so there's no advantage to rush the launch of the Pleo.

Pleo To Be Unveiled AT CES 2007?

Extremetech comments that the Pleo robotics dinosaur may not have had an official launch to-date but it may happen at CES in Las Vegas 9-11th January seeing as Ugobe's CEO Bob Christopher will be speaking at the show. But there's no actual confirmation that the unveiling will take place.

Pre-ordering

The Pleo Toy Dinosaur is set for pre-order in the States on 24th December. But I've had news from their PR agency Shift Communications that the "pre-order channels haven't been confirmed yet" - eek it's getting close!

More details revealed

C.net has a great little article about the Pleo Toy Dinosaur. It comments that Bob Christopher (Ugobe CEO) has said that "[we] can consider it more of a lifelike creature than a toy," which is fair enough with me if you look at the specs: 150 motors, sensors coming out of its ears, cameras out of its nose - it's no Furby.

But the important factor is that it's due to come out in the second quarter of 2007 - at last! The important issue is it better the performance of the Sony Aibo which basically failed to make it's mark at the cash registers.

But C.net believes the Pleo Dinosaur will be fair much better. It's not priced in the same bracket as the Aibo, at only $250 / £132 it's even keenly priced than the Wii Console which sold out spectacularly.

Another factor that C.net see as as a reason why the Pleo will be a success and that Ugobe is launching a developer kit, moving the Pleo away from the "walking, talking" share of the market. We wait for concrete release details, but this should keep us going for now.

Pleo not shipping until March 2007

The news we were dreading has come through and proves my last post to totally inaccurate! "No News is just news before we get the grim real hard fact that the Pleo Toy Dinosaur won't be shipping until March 2007.

Ugobe have said they'll be taking orders on Christmas Eve but representatives of the company have stated that they've been working on the "organic motion" to make it as lifelike as possible.

So we have have to think about what we would want, a semi-finished pleo now or a great one in March?

A spokeswomen, Khristine Valdez has said in an email :

"[T]here is a lot that they're working on to make sure Pleo is up to standard on intelligence, autonomy and organic behaviors and emotions. They're perfecting the organic motion and coordinated gestures of moving all motors at different degrees of speed and staying balanced at the same time. Basically, Ugobe is making sure that they 100 percent succeed in blurring the distinction between a robot and a real creature."

Source: abnews.go.com

Pleo may be ready for Christmas

They're cutting it fine, they know it though.

The head guy at Ugobe, the makers of the Pleo Dinosaur, say they're planning to go into production in October and November this year and hopefully to make shipments in December. We're all hoping that the pleo will be born into many households this Christmas!

There is the potential for delay however. There's 14 motors, 38 sensors and 8 CPUs and has a similiar level of complexitiy to the Sony AIBO.

If you look at the image below, you'll be able to see the level of complexity and hopefully the level of interactioness and make it more attractive to kids up and down the country.




They're totally sure they want to get every aspect of the design, development and marketing correct.