Those eyeballing Leap Motion's upcoming 3D gesture controller will have to sit tight a bit longer as its launch has officially been pushed back to July 22. The decision, according to CEO Michael Buckwald, was made to give the company more time to test the device before putting it in the hands of consumers.
In a note to customers, Buckwald said the reality is they very likely could have hit the May 13 ship date but it wouldn't have left time for comprehensive testing. He said the only way they felt 100 percent confident they could deliver a magical product was to push the date back. The device was originally scheduled to ship earlier this year before being pushed back to May.
In the interim, Leap will begin a beta test with the 12,000 or so developers that already have the device in their hands. The beta will give these developers full access to the product's features including OS interaction.
Buckwald pointed out that this extra round of beta testing was to focus primarily on software, not hardware. That's good news for Leap as more than 600,000 gesture controllers have already been made. Either way, however, it must be a bit disappointing for those that already have a unit on order.
If you aren't familiar with the device, the 3-by-1-inch module is able to track the movement of all 10 fingers on both hands up to 1/1000th-millimeter accuracy with no visible latency. If you need a visual on exactly how the technology works, I encourage you to check out our post on Google Earth with Leap Motion integration.