On yet another “Sharing Session“, Ayaneo spoke about the success of the KONKR Pocket Advance, while also revealing a special “Developer Edition” of the device.
First, enjoy this absolutely wild AI sequence shown during the beginning of the Sharing Session.
What Was Shared
Off the back of the extremely successful sales of the KONKR Pocket Advance, Arthur spoke about the content and developer incentive program, encouraging users to continue to develop software and games for the KONKR Pocket Advance. This is encouraging, as AYANEO has had a history of stalling or completely abandoning software development for some of their devices in the past.
To that point, Arthur reveled a special, “developer only” edition of the KONKR Pocket Advance. The developer edition will come with the previously shown Onyx Ice body, but this time with striking red accents and “DEV” stickers and badges on the back of the device. This version will not be available to the general public, and is only available if you participate in Ayaneo’s developer incentive program.
Some users are already lamenting the fact that they can’t readily get their hands on this version of the device, and this feels like a very Ayaneo thing to pull from the success of the KONKR Pocket Advance sales. It’s nice to see AYANEO encouraging users to develop and share the KONKR Pocket Advance, but tying a limited-edition colorway to this participation feels a bit icky.
Arthur also spent a large portion of the Sharing Session on a raffle for domestic users that used the coupons from the last Sharing Session to purchase KONKR Pocket Advances, with another raffle starting and drawing in October. Devices like the AYANEO Pocket Air Mini, AYANEO Pocket S2, and other items were raffled off to lucky winners on the stream.
Going Forward
This was a bit of a strange Sharing Session, especially with the AI carnival that kicked things off. Sharing a special edition of the KONKR Pocket Advance that is only available to a select few individuals feels like a bit of a kick in the pants, but it’s encouraging to see AYANEO drumming up support for the KONKR Pocket Advance, especially given AYANEO’s previous history of abandoning support for some of their devices rather quickly.
2 Comments
It’s not that weird to have an exclusive dev colorway. Sony did it all the way back on the PS1 with that homebrew-dev edition of the PS1 (can’t remember the actual name off the top of my head). Kinda sad I guess you can’t just get this, but it wouldn’t be hard to hear mod an onyx unit yourself with different colored buttons 🤷 and they already have lots of great color options
The Net Yaroze! Nintendo’s done limited colorways for devs too, the Panda model on the 3DS probably being one of the most well known (white top, black bottom).
I’d definitely give it a couple weeks at most before new button kits pop up in the usual places for the Pocket Advance.