Sorry that the campaign wasn't successful in funding - I have been following the thread(s) everyday and it was sad to see. The whole campaign seemed a bit sleepy - very few updates from the creators, very few comments; it's as if the energy from pre-campaign was all wiped out once the campaign went live -- likely due to the costs that perhaps people weren't prepared for. Also, possibly the confusion that occurred from the ATX or SFX styles instead of a conversion system like the prototype displayed.
Having said that, I like that you're not throwing your hands up in the air and walking away. Realistically though, how much of a delay has this kink in the road incurred to having a product in our hands. As of this month, my current desktop is 5 years old and I was hoping to build a new system this year. I already have an ncase M1 (v2), but my needs have expanded past that of a mini-itx build, or maybe it hasn't that is what I need to figure out.
On a side note, I spent 4 years of my life living in mainland China, and eventually married a Chinese native before I decided to come back to the states and bring her with me. It shouldn't be that difficult to find a quality manufacturer if you did go down that road, but my biggest concern would be that you're essentially handing over the blueprints for them to produce copy-cat models. Perhaps inevitable if the thing takes off, but much easier when you don't have to reverse engineer.
I, personally, would rather have all features than US manufacturing. On the other hand, I rarely use front audio jacks - my speakers volume control module has a headphone jack that I use instead. I'm also looking into picking up an external dac/amp which would have it's own headphone jack - so of all features that had to be cut I'd be willing to sacrifice the front audio jacks.
Good luck in tackling what comes next - I'm eagerly awaiting the news.
