BTW, the hardware will only be compatible with CG2 controllers. Making hardware compatible with different circuit boards = costs lots of money. Let's say I can produce a mod chip for $30 if I buy 3,000 of them at one time from the manufacturer. That's the most I can buy because frankly I'm a low volume operation in terms of electronics. Most companies (Apple, HTC, etc.) sell millions of their devices and save huge amounts of money by producing ONE design a million times. When you start to produce less than 10,000 of an electronic device, the hardware costs start to skyrocket.
Now let's say I have to build two mod chips, one for two different types of circuit boards. I can only buy 1,500 of each kind, and the manufacturer has to charge me more, because his machine tooling costs just went up, because he has to tool his machines TWICE, but he is producing less volume for each type. The price of producing the mod chip just went up 30-40%. Also, I now have to develop TWO prototypes instead of just one, and now I have to write software to support TWO mod chips instead of one. So instead of spending $15,000 in time and energy developing prototype and software, I am now spending more along the lines of $22,500 to develop the chip. Those costs have to be passed on to the customer as well as the increased hardware cost.
Now let's say customers want it to be compatible with 3-4 different kinds of hardware (wired, wireless, CG1, CG2, matrix, CL...) now not only is the manufacturer re-tooling 5-6 times, but I am only producing each design in a quantity of 300-400 each. Now I am paying $60 per mod chip. On top of that, I now have have to design 5-6 prototypes and my software has to support a huge range of different software. Plus this ends up causing me to have to train my employees to install the chip in 5-6 different controller shells. The cost of getting this thing to market just went from $30 a chip to almost $100 a chip.
I don't know about you, but it's already a stretch for customers to afford the Viking360 controllers at their current prices. I would love to actually develop a mod chip that brings the customer way more and costs the same or less as the existing Viking controllers. One big consideration in developing the Valhalla (and why it is taking so long) is cost control. I need to get the cost of the hardware literally down to $30 or less for each mod chip, because after you add in all my other overheads - investing $100,00 in several thousand mod chips without knowing if they will sell, new software development costs, prototype development costs, employee training (including hardware installs and training people how to deal with tech support questions with the new hardware)... this becomes a major operation.
. So I'm putting my bet on what I know best which is the next XBOX 360 mod chip. I'm already going to make a big gamble releasing the next chip and I am in my comfort zone with XBOX 360.