So far, there's no guarantee such a target will be met.
It is, of course, early days, but a total of $21,000 has been pledged to date a figure that represents roughly 2.2 percent of the campaign's required total.
Nevertheless, PlayMG founding partner Taylor Cavanah has confirmed the handheld will launch regardless of the amount of money raised. So, instead of fretting about funding, Cavanah has told us he's more concerned about engaging the development community.
To find out more, we caught up with Cavanah to ask him about pricing, target markets, and why consumers shouldn't just buy a budget Android smartphone instead.
Pocket Gamer: What is the MG, and how does it differ from existing Android devices?
Taylor Cavanah: The number one difference is our focus on gaming. This focus means we have a built in avatar system that games the device as users play and download apps.
We have big plans to open this to developers to help promote discovery of great indie titles, and to offer a franchise character that they can develop games around.
That leads to our second big advantage a user base purely composed of gamers. There isn't a portable device out there with an open Android platform that can offer an all gamer user base.
The third advantage is space for games. With an expandable microSD slot and a focus on gaming we can preload a lot of games. We want to work with developers to get their games in front of a gaming audience from the beginning.
The last advantage is yet to come but we will be making a lot of decisions on our next version of the MG and we want to make every one of those decisions with developer input to make sure they are getting what they want from the device.
What's your target audience with the MG, and how are you going to pursue this market segment?
We are initially targeting the 39 million kids in the US that are under 18 years-old and don't have a smartphone or smart device.
They range from older kids to tweens to teens and cross both genders, and they either play their games on their parents' phones right now or have no access to this new market.
What are you expecting the launch date and price of the MG to be?
We are estimating to launch MG for the 2012 holiday season. Our suggested retail price will be $169.00.
So why would a consumer choose the MG over a budget Android smartphone?
The total cost of ownership - the data plans add a lot of expense to a device that is going to be used to mainly play games.
There are also a lot of parents that don't want their children to have a phone but don't mind them having a portable gaming device.
What is the developer council, and in what ways do you hope to work with developers?
The idea is that we will have a forum where game developers and our technical guys at MG can meet and discuss the future of this gaming space.
More importantly we want to have a direct relationship with game development houses big and small because they need a gaming focused partner on the hardware side of the equation.
We want to be the Nintendo or PlayStation of this new app based gaming space.
For developers that means input into hardware decisions, device software decisions, preloads, exclusive titles and promotions.
Do you have any plans to launch an MG app store, or will you purely be tapping into Google Play's library?
At the moment we plan to have the Google Play Store as the single source of content on the device.
We are in talks with major game houses to launch with preloaded games and/or game stores from the game houses.
There hasn't been any decision on an MG gaming store as of yet, but we'd love to hear from developers about their thoughts on this topic.
If the Kickstarter campaign doesn't reach its funding target, will the MG still launch?
That is our goal. Kickstarter is very important to us and is critical to accelerating our launch - and will really define the level of launch that we have.
If the campaign is not successful, we will still launch.
How would the $950,000 you're asking for be put to use, and how would the failure of this Kickstarter campaign affect the MG?
It is a good deal of money and will help us start up production and marketing efforts.
Hardware production is much more front-loaded because of the inventory that we have to take on and this campaign will go a long way in getting the production lines rolling. So, most of the money goes directly to making the products pledged for on Kickstarter.
I will also say that the voice of the people that we get from Kickstarter is also very important. We're going up against really big guys in this space and they have a lot of money.
We can't beat them in marketing funds but if we can rally tens of thousands of supporters to say we want a change and we want an MG then we've got something we can build on as we move into launch. That support will be invaluable.
Thanks to Taylor for his time.
