Snap may have flown a little too close to the sun in developing the palm-sized selfie drone, Pixy. After an announcement at the end of April, the social media company has already started slowing down the project, as of April Wall Street Journal report. CEO Evan Spiegel has apparently passed the message that the hardware is a cause of reprioritisation amid wider economic concerns.
Not all is lost for the product, exactly. Snap will apparently continue to sell through its pre-existing limited supply of the $250 device. The company declined to comment on the report.
The company hasn’t exactly been a hardware powerhouse. The Pixy joined the company’s Spectacle goggles, which have been a bit of a mixed bag – although the product has recently shifted from the novelty of face-worn cameras to a product aimed at the burgeoning AR category. It looks like Pixy won’t have the luxury of trying to fit in the market. Hardware is, of course, difficult. Notably, Meta has been through his own recent struggles with his Portal devices.
Still, it’s hard to know exactly how seriously Snap took its efforts with the Pixy. The system was a bit of a brightly colored toy on its own, without the sophistication (and years of development) of a DJI. Hell, even DJI ended up killing its closest equivalent, the Spark, in an effort to streamline its consumer offerings — and don’t even get me started on the whole GoPro Karma debacle (it involves the drones falling from the sky, for starters). ).
Between more expensive products from companies like DJI and much cheaper knockoff systems, there may not be much market for consumer drones to play in after all. world. Anyway, now you have a collectible and a strange piece of engineering history on your hands.