With our big announcement coming up at the end of this month... I thought it would be nice to give our customers, who have been very patient BTW, a hint.
As with any big news in this industry, there is usually "the good news and the bad news". Most often, the bad news is not getting the features you hoped for... or the cameras aren't free.
Our only bad news is the schedule hit. This should not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention and it won't be terminal, but that is about the closest thing we have to bad news.
At RED, "everything changes". In that spirit... even our philosophy has changed.
In a "unique to the industry way" we released the RED ONE as a beta camera and fixed things, enabled features and generally relied on our transparency and the patience of our customers to carry us through. We needed to do that because 3 years ago... we had no idea what we were doing. We were learning how to build a camera right before your very eyes.
Since most of our customers live here, I have tried to communicate as directly as possible so RED ONE owners were not left in the dark. We delivered our promises and even added some major surprises for free along the way. For the most part... it all worked out pretty well.
What is changing is that we are about to sell new cameras to many more new customers (that's the plan anyway). We don't believe that most of them will fight through a beta program and update their firmware on a weekly basis... or stand for "trust us... we are almost there". We need to have a bulletproof program with a camera that works and features in place. When we initially announced our schedule, we did NOT have this philosophy in mind. It takes time to deliver a more robust and trouble-free system. That means a schedule hit. Pretty easy math.
We do have a plan for complete testing in this community, just different than the 1st time around. We will be transparent as always... that part of the philosophy has not changed.
Even though the schedule hit is not unexpected, we do expect to hear that some of you "just can't wait another day and need to buy something right now." We fully understand. But we can't do it both ways. We can either deliver "work in process" cameras or finished cameras when they are really done. We have chosen the latter.
For those of you worried about big price increases... relax.
For those of you that need to know this program is still worth it... relax even more. It is better than our wildest dreams... we suspect yours as well.
I will clarify most of this Oct. 30th.
We appreciate your support.
Jim
Originally Posted by Jason Ramsey
