The hardware was drastically revised to lower costs.
The new hardware clearly isn't ready.
The new hardware was slated to be shown.
One of the system's games already has a fully-functional SNES port.
They jammed an SNES into a Jaguar shell, and jammed the SNES cart into a Jag cart shell. They're going to blow some PR smoke about how "We've only got one game working for now, but this is roughly how it's going to look when it's finished."
Seriously guys, this kind of thing is nothing new.
[.img]http://i.imgur.com/OK9KAxa.jpg[/img]
I would say it's not a very similar scenario for two reasons. I doubt anyone has any issues with MS having games played on a devkit instead of the final hardware at gaming conventions because we know MS has the manpower and funding required to actually produce and release a console. They have a track record both as hardware and software maker.
Secondly, there is a big difference between showing up with a PC (devkit of your expected hardware) and a complete board of another console hidden with duct tape pretending it's your own novel creation. The latter is basically amateur hour especially when you are crowdfunding your console and your previous crowdfunding campaign was a disaster.
It would be much simpler for them to team up with the people behind the Retron 5 or Retrofreak and make a special Coleco emubox in a jaguar shell release with Colecovision support on top of the rest and make PCB or flashcarts for their cartridges games compatible with one of the slot.
I don't think there is malicious intent behind their deception. Mike seems a passionate retrogamer and really wants to make his dream hardware but I think it's starting to cloud his judgment a bit.
He and the other on the team have a tendency to double down when challenged on the project and they usually end up losing face badly. Just today on their FB page they were presenting the hardware shown at the Toy Fair as a custom system they wrote a SNES FPGA core for. They started replying to naysayers that it wasn't a SNES in there until someone used the picture where you see the SNES plug and cables and the duct tape from behind and they had to quickly take the picture down from their FB page.
When you present features that are bound to attract enthusiasts that spend years tearing down and building hardware you need to deliver or else they will see through your deception.
They are supposed to reveal the board of the console for the Kickstarter. It will make or break it. If they lose face again the project will be done.
If they can deliver an FPGA SNES core on top of the other cores and all this for 150$ it will be a really impressive feat and victory for them.
Apparently, the only SNES FPGA core that is fully functional so far is from a Japanese enthusiast with a chip costing 50$ on top of the board according to Atariage.If they can beat that good for them.