A fellow reader DJ Motion has found out some info on pre-order issues. Here is a little story he sent me.

“I decided to see what info on Bleem for Dreamcast I could dig up, and to see if it was even still in development.

To do this, I decided to make up a fake store in my home town and pretend that I’d taken a wad of pre-orders for the product to see if they could help me.

They did, but it was information that (I think) has already been posted before. However, included at the top of the mail was ‘We have always advised AGAINST pre-orders’. How we’re supposed to take this is one of two ways: advise against them because the product will NEVER EXIST, or advise against them so not to make customers unhappy with delays.

Either way, if Randy REALLY IS working on making the product superb as they are STILL CLAIMING in this fast response to my mail, then we’ve got something VERY SPECIAL to look forward to indeed. You could always buy a PSOne, or get a PSX emu for your PC, but to play emulated games on your DC plugged in to your DC always seems to be more appealing to me. Especially if it plays PSX games in 640×480. But these days we shouldn’t get too excited, as you never know what canning will be done next. Let’s hope Bleem for DC really doesn’t end up in the DC bin along with Soul Reaver 2 and Colin McRae Rally.

Here’s the reply they sent me:

Dear Adam,
We have always advised against pre-orders and that would still be our opinion as:
Unfortunately, at this time we do not have any information regarding the format, pricing or release date for bleem! for DC. This is not because we sit around the pool drinking martinis all day in fact our sole programmer works up to 20 hours a day, 7 days a week and has had 6 days off (to the best of his memory) since 1995. The PC project didn’t exactly happen overnight either!
The immense complexity of the bleem! for Dreamcast project would take any other company 3-4 years, teams of programmers and millions of dollars. Sadly we do not have these luxuries nonetheless Randy (our programmer and the founder of bleem!) has done an amazing job in the months he has been working on bleemcast. The patent suit filed by Sony in addition to their existing lawsuit doesn’t help matters and the exhausting and extensive game testing is enormously time consuming.
Admittedly, this process has taken us longer than we anticipated but we have learned a great deal from the PC product and I think you can expect the quality of bleem! for Dreamcast to be exceptional..
I invite you to keep an eye on our web site for updates.

P.S. I hope it’s darn soon

Thanks for your patience..

Will Kempe
V-P bleem! inc.
will@bleem.com

It is a bit long. But should do fine for everyone.