In the latest of what has been some bad news for the new Coleco Chameleon console, Polygon has reported that David Giltinan, one of the major team members on the project has quit. Giltinan made a fairly lengthy post about his departure on LinkedIn.
“It’s not a big shocker to admit that everything going on with the Coleco Chameleon is a major reason why I have to separate myself from everything associated with it,” he said. “I am not aiming to throw anyone under the bus for why things went south with the project. The blame is shared by all on the team, including myself. With that, I apologize for any ignorance on my part for not fully following through with my desire for the truth when speaking about the console. Instead I allowed myself to become a vessel for misinformation, and for that I am again sorry.”
The Chameleon is being developed by RetroVGS. Coleco added its name to the console late last year. Lots of controversy has arisen around the new console since it was shown at Toy Fair last month. There have been multiple reports that the system shown at Toy Fair, was actually a SNES Jr. disguised in the Chameleon exterior. Later, after RetroVGS posted some pictures on its Facebook page, more people spotted what allegedly was an old DVR capture card. The pictures have been taken down.
Coleco has announced that they’re looking closely at all of the allegations and may remove their name from the project. The post reads:
“It has come to our attention that the community has certain concerns over the prototypes involving the Retro VGS model. The team at Retro remains confident that their product is developed to the extent as describe; HOWEVER, in order to confirm or debase these concerns, Coleco has demanded to inspect the prototype units within a seven day time frame. At which time, independent engineers will review their findings and determine if those units are up to our standards. We will report some or all of those findings to the community so as long as they do not interfere with proprietary information. We remain hopeful that the community’s concerns are merely speculations, but if there is merit to the concerns, then we have no choice but to abandon the project rather than release a sub-par product.”
That post was made on March 2, so we should know in the next couple of days whether Coleco decides to pull support. We’ll keep you updated on the story.
