We don't have any official word on this as of yet, but as our main man Ryan Block noted
in a tweet earlier (and
Wired speculated on
back in February), it looks like
Pleo-maker
Ugobe may -- in fact -- be extinct. As of this writing, the company's site was offline, and calls to the dino-bot factory have gone unanswered (though their voicemail system seems to be humming along just fine). While we haven't heard a peep one way or another from the folks in charge,
Wired reported in its article that the company was struggling months ago to stay afloat in our sinking economy. Could it be that people just don't have a spare $350 to drop on a robotic toys these days? Say it ain't so. Whatever the case, you can be sure that just like actual dinosaurs, the legacy Pleo will leave behind is
rich,
storied, and
often violent. How about
you there in / on the Interverse... heard any news about Ugobe lately?
Update: A few of you wrote in to let us know that the Ugobe site is
back up. Maybe Pleo ain't extinct yet?
posted Mar 30th 2009 7:37PM
It was a stupid, expensive toy.
Entertaining for its novelty value.
It's hard to buy and power a $300+ toy when you're losing your home.
Love live the only true dinobot . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimlock
sad...if they were lets say..50 bucks (i know it's not a realistic price for how much they cost to be made) they would have been the next furbies.
Last I heard was they were moving to Idaho.
http://www.ktvb.com/news/localnews/stories/ktvbn-oct0408-ugobe_to_eagle.dec35f47.html
No sign of them yet.
the pleo would have sold gangbusters if it could walk
They could walk.
just not fast enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95MAyWE0ERk
I find that video strangely upsetting.
wow me too, thats just not fair
Holy Sh17. Did you see something pink sticking out of its head around the 1:30 mark? It's almost like its guts are hanging out or something.
Gonna see that in my sleep tonight.
Poor Pleo...I didn't like that video, not one bit.
store.ugobe.com is still up
wait, what does it do again? moan?
Natural Selection?
Interverse?
What? That thing costs 350$???? My GF's brother bought one for her and I thought he was being cheap for buying her a PoS toy...
Does this mean the Pleos will turn into petroleum?
Petroleum is from marine sediments. But, in some millions of years from now I might very well be proved wrong by those irrascable Pleos.
cute
Taiwanese site works just fine.
http://www.ucube.com.tw/main.php
The whole website is still up, just an error on the main page... the rest of the site works fine.
(http://www.pleoworld.com/discover)
You should probably update this story. It's never good to incorrectly predict someone/somethings demise (e.g. Steve Jobs, etc.)
blame the meteors
ifixit did a teardown of this thing a while ago. It's impressively complex and sophisticated on the inside. Link: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/Pleo/597/1
They got bailout money from Obama and are now making more saleable robotic Asian women.
I work right next door to their office in Emeryville, CA and they have had eviction/unpaid rent+utilities notices on their doors for a little while now. Their office is also almost completely empty.
Well, their representative for South East Asia is still on...
See here...http://www.pensonic.com/main.htm
Will check out their forums and see later....
--
Stop Spamming
you spelled internet wrong.
I can still get to their website: http://www.ugobe.com/
Hopefully the site was only suffering from a temporary glitch.
Looks like they are in the process of moving. Maybe they hosted the sites internally and were at the California location and when switched over the IT or developer didn't set up the homepage correctly (reason why other comments say the other pages work). I could understand the business difficulties they are probably receiving for a toy with a price tag of $350. With the declinations in novelty spending, I don't know anyone who would jump on this product.
Ugobe have sold 100.000 pleos around the world (this sounds like a big success in business), Pleo is not extinct, a new life form will open his eyes late this year...
site appears to be down, but it looks more like server problems than anything.
Just looked again, this is not a server issue, the hosting has been pulled
Seems the site is partially back. www.ugobe.com seems to be there though www.pleoworld.com isn't completely happy.. some server problems.. Granted Pleo's are expensive and not young-kid friendly, but it would be a real shame if Ugobe disappeared (particularly before they release the PDK development software for the Pleo) Pleos are wildly cute. I'm interested to see what they do next.. A Pleo with a better battery solution would be fab (ie, the ability to recharge itself aibo style and maybe something better than NIMH and its "memory effect")
I work in the same office plaza as Ugobe's offices. The offices are completely empty and there's notices of eviction, 4 months unpaid rent, and Probable Abandonment posted on the door. Looks like they definitely went the way of the dinosaur...
Maybe if Ugobe made a smaller version of Pleo costing less, they would have been
more successful?
Whatever, long live Pleos! And whoever has one, hang on to him! He will
be a legend!