Jeri Ellsworth's Tilt 5 Kickstarter Sells 1500+ AR Units in Under a Week

Jeri demo-ing Tilt 5 at GenCon

Less than a week after launching a Kickstarter for Tilt 5, a totally new approach to augmented reality, it's attracted over 1700 backers and pre-orders of over 1500 Tilt 5 AR kits, totally blowing past the original $450,000 pledge goal, and fast approaching $1 million total. At this rate, interest in Tilt 5 could reach or surpass the $2.4 million raised for the original Oculus Rift Kickstarter which launched the current generation of VR.

CEO and co-founder Jeri Ellsworth attributes this success to her company's precise targeting of a specific market (board gamers/gamers who also play board games) which she discussed with me last week:

“Our focus to take what you love about video games and board games and marry them together,” as she put it to me. (Tabletop gaming is a $7 billion market, she notes, while videogames are 100x that number.) So Tilt Five’s AR experience is tightly integrated with its game board, and integrates well with many existing tabletop gaming systems -- including Fantasy Grounds, which holds the license to miniatures for Dungeons & Dragons and other major franchises.

"We put a lot of careful thought, research and planning into the first market we wanted to launch into," Jeri tells me me today. "We always believed the Kickstarter would do well, but you never know if all of your hard work and plans will fly until you hit the 'Go' button. By the response we've received I think we've created something very special that's filling a real need in the market."

Pledges have come in so fast, they've had to jigger with production:

"We noticed that sales were really high in our XE package, so we've so we quickly jumped in before the numbers got too high and limited the units [delivered] in June and added a second batch in July, so things will be more manageable."

It's still early days, but it's looking more and more likely that Tilt 5 will soon become a serious competitor in the AR/VR ecosystem.

Comments

[sirhc desantis]

I want one...

Finally, something that actually cuts through all the rubbish and delivers something I actually want right now, even if its still way past my happy price, I can start squeezing the "food" budget and hell I will even run win10 to use the SDK. Stuff the fborg horizontal etc :)

(PS not a board ganer in the slightest - can see a lot of other uses for this)

[Joey1058]

I could see something like this being bought by Hasbro and marketed as aggressively as their traditional board games. This is a win for everyone.