FAQ's: New Sifteo Cubes : Sifteo Help & Support

Why are you releasing a new generation of Sifteo Cubes?
Over the last year, we've received a lot of great feedback about our original Sifteo Cubes.

You’ve told us that you want Sifteo Cubes to be truly mobile (not tethered to a computer during play), to work together in sets larger than six (you want to go cube crazy!), to have deeper games (you want to be playing with cubes for years), and to be more affordable. Sweeter graphics and better overall performance would be nice too.

Guess what, we wanted to do these things too! To tell you the truth, it seemed kinda impossible to do all those things at once - but we did it! We've been working non-stop to make these desires a reality, and now, in our new generation of Sifteo Cubes, they are. We think you're going to love them.

Who is this new generation of Sifteo Cubes for?

Our new Sifteo games are way cool, and we've designed them to appeal to ages 7 through adult. You'll love exploring this next generation of Intelligent Play individually and with family and friends.

How much do the new Sifteo Cubes cost?

A system with 3 cubes costs $129.95; a system with 6 cubes is $199.95. In developing our new Sifteo Cubes, we made it a priority to be able to offer them to you more affordably without sacrificing quality. This wasn't easy, but we've been crafty! Listing everything we've done to reduce the cost of Sifteo Cubes would take pages. But if we were to boil it down, it would be:

World-class engineering - some of the brightest humans on the planet work at Sifteo, and they’ve built truly modern, truly cutting edge software systems that run on amazingly teeny tiny processors
AAA batteries - We wanted generation 2 to have a long battery life and to be expandable past six cubes. Ditching the charging dock and moving to AAA’s let us do that, and helped reduce system cost to boot.

You can pre-order our new Sifteo Cubes on our website, as well as through Amazon and Toys R Us. They will ship by November 30th, so they’ll arrive in plenty of time for the holidays!

Can I use my original Sifteo Cubes with the new Sifteo Base?

We thought long and hard about backwards compatibility, but in order to make our new Sifteo Cubes a reality (and an affordable one at that), we couldn’t also make them work together seamlessly with original Sifteo Cubes. We had to redesign Sifteo Cubes from the ground up. This means that they're awesome, but also that they are completely different internally than our original Sifteo Cubes. Original Sifteo Cubes cannot communicate with a Sifteo Base, nor can you combine new Sifteo Cubes into a set with your original cubes to play using Siftrunner. Games for our original cubes will not run on our new cubes and vice versa.

Can I use the points I’ve already bought to buy games for my new Sifteo Cubes?

Yes! Games for our new system will be purchased using Credits, and we’ve already converted the points in your account to credits. 10 Credits = $1, so for each 10 points, you’ve received 1 Credit. Don’t worry, you haven’t lost any value in the conversion! All games for original Sifteo Cubes will now be purchased using the equivalent number of Credits.

Where can I buy a charger for my new Sifteo Cubes?

You don't need one! Our new Sifteo Cubes and bases take normal AAA batteries. We do encourage you to use rechargeable AAA batteries!

Original Sifteo Cubes

Can I still use my original Sifteo Cubes?

Of course you can! You can also still download Siftrunner here and will still be able to get games from the Sifteo Store in Siftrunner.

Can I still buy original Sifteo Cubes?

Original Sifteo Cubes are still available on Amazon.com. If you want to expand your original Sifteo Cubes set to 6 cubes, now’s the time! If you're an educator, you can still place a purchase order for original Sifteo Cubes, again for a limited time.

Are you releasing any more games for original Sifteo Cubes?

While we will not be making any more games for original Sifteo Cubes, we are continuing to accept external game submissions, so we may be releasing games that others have developed. You can also continue to create custom content for your current cubes using the Creativity Kit!

Will you still help me if I have problems with my original Sifteo Cubes?

Indeed we will! We are happy to answer any questions you have about your cubes, new or original. As always, you can contact us by writing support@sifteo.com or by visiting www.sifteo.com/help.

You can find our returns policy and warranty for original Sifteo Cubes here. We are happy to continue honoring these policies.

Where can I find more information about the new Sifteo Cubes?

There's lots more information on our website, as well as right here on our support site.

Make sure to check out our new video to see the new Sifteo Cubes in action and look at all the exciting games available for our new Sifteo Cubes.

I'm a developer: what does this mean for me?

(The following content is mirrored in the developer section.)

Is a new SDK available?

Yes! It will be available for download October 1. We think it’s a stepwise improvement from the SDK for original Sifteo Cubes.

How is developing for the new Sifteo Cubes different?

We've been paying attention to the feedback we've been getting about our first SDK, and we've implemented a lot of changes for our new one!

Games that you write for the new generation of Sifteo cubes will run on an embedded (portable!) platform instead of a full PC. This means that you'll have less overhead, more predictable performance, and nearly full reign over the system. There is less system to go around (games get 32 kB of RAM and the main CPU runs at 72 MHz), but we've also created a lot of cutting-edge compiler and data compression technology to keep your games as small and efficient as possible.

Speaking of efficiency, our new system offers lower latency all around. It's optimized for low-latency input and output, so you can create more responsive games than you could before. And, with full access to a live stream of 3-axis accelerometer data from each cube, your games can respond to more delicate movements.

No longer will you need to use C# and MonoDevelop: we're now using C++. Our compiler works wonders with optimization, so you can write fairly high-level code (with plenty of compile-time abstraction) that will run efficiently.

You'll be using a completely new graphics engine that refreshes backgrounds and sprites simultaneously, instead of copying them one at a time like original Sifteo Cubes did. As a result, animation is much smoother now. Also, you'll be moving up from 8-bit to full 16-bit color!

Our simulator has also been entirely revamped to be incredibly accurate. It's so thorough that we use it internally to develop and test our real firmware. It sports a cycle-accurate simulation of the hardware present in each cube, as well as plenty of debugging features. The simulator even includes Lua scripting support, so you can use it for automated testing and analysis.

We think you'll have a blast working with our new SDK.

(Our engineering team doesn’t like to brag, but the new SDK and Sifteo cubes are TOTALLY. AMAZING. If you’re not impressed, you must be crazy!
-- Jeevan, Sifteo CEO)

What is the process for getting a game published through Sifteo?

Along with a new generation of cubes and an all-new SDK, we're launching a brand new publishing plan. For the remainder of 2012 and through 2013, we'll be working with select external developers to bring a greater variety of games to Sifteo Cubes. We will accept the developers with the most exciting ideas and experiences to publish with us, receiving support throughout the development process and payment for their work. For more information about this publishing program, please click here.

During this phase, we will aim to build the infrastructure to support a platform distribution model, under which we’ll be able to publish any game that meets our publication criteria (see our publishing page for more details on these). We will launch this distribution model around the beginning of 2014. To sign up to be notified when we launch our distribution channel, please click here.

What about the games I developed for original Sifteo Cubes?

We've seen some really exciting projects that have been made using the SDK for the Original Sifteo Cubes, and we're thrilled that our technology has inspired you. We would love to see what you’ve done: please use our publishing inquiry form to submit these for our review.

It was (and still is) our plan for the C# SDK for original Sifteo Cubes to remain available. We had some hiccups in getting it up on our new website, which we're working on right now. It will be available at developers.sifteo.com/original/download as soon as we get it fixed. In the meantime, you can download it from the following links:
Windows
Mac
We apologize for the inconvenience!

We will continue to accept game submissions for original Sifteo Cubes under the same conditions that we’ve had until now: any game that we distribute needs to be great, we’ll be offering them for free, and we won’t be able to pay you for them (but we will give you a set of the new Sifteo Cubes).

If we think your game is great, we will encourage you to port it to our new platform and participate in our current publishing program. To port games you’ve developed for original Sifteo Cubes to our new Sifteo Cubes, those games will need to be rewritten in C++. We hope that all of the tools and polish we’ve put into our development environment will make this a relatively painless process.