I love the excitement. Details will be provided when ARCx launches because we're 110% developing. We haven't marketed a date because I knew we'd miss it due to several significant unknowns regarding cross-platform and web UI, so I'm hoping for April. Needless to say, creating ARCx has made me understand how unique, efficient, and powerful ARC truly is.

1. The platform is mainly done except for a few cross-platform challenges with audio and videospecifically speech synthesis and recognition. Microsoft Windows supports those things, but Linux and macOS don't. They do, but online, and it's more complicated than that. Linux has only online speech services, and macOS has some Siri stuff, but it's limited and doesn't accept dynamic settings. We're still not sure what to do about that yet...

2. Also, we built a perfect vision system with ARC, and while OpenCV is neat, it's bloated, and we're having substantial performance issues that require customization... as usual

3. Looking at the project list, there are over 50 items left to complete. Some are 15 minutes of work; some are 20 hours of work. There are also 600 robot skills remaining in port. We've only built a handful of robot skills for testing because the platform API changes daily during development "cross-platform gotchas." So even when the platform is completed enough for beta, it won't have many robot skills.

4. The website changes are mostly complete, maybe 50%. The skill store is the most significant change as it needs to support ARC and ARCx skills, plus multiple categories and cross-platform

I'm writing to answer your questions quickly because I'm super swamped. I apologize for being short.

1. Probs ARCx beta in April or May, as I said above

2. Same pricing, same subscription. Choose ARC and/or ARCx under the same subscription. The current subscription system works well for everyone, so we'll keep rocking it. Runtime edition for perpetual, just like ARC.

3. Subscription pricing will be in place immediately when ARCx is released. Continue using ARC if you don't want to use ARCx during beta because you can use it when it's ready. I think the only reason for using the beta is to experience it. Remember, it's web-based, so there will be a significant UI difference and re-learning curve, which you may not value immediately. So, users who do not need the features of ARCx can continue using ARC.

4. ARC will continue to run as is. We'll wait until ARCx is rock'n before identifying an end-of-life date for ARC. I don't see a need to kill ARC anytime soon because it can keep running in parallel, even if we don't add any new features

5. Legacy ARC will continue to be subscription-based.

6. ARCx is web-based, but that does not mean it requires Internet connectivity. Web-based means HTML; it does not mean Internet.

Hopefully, DJ has answered your questions satisfactorily. As DJ said, we're all quite busy building the next generation of robot software. But don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. We will post details when marketing for the product begins. At this time, we haven't been public about ARCx. DJ has been releasing details to the community to share with our closest engaged members.

Thanks! That answers all my questions!! Looking forward to its release.

Thanks! We are excited to see what you all do with it!

DJ, thank you for the update I am so waiting for this update for the XR1 project.  I would love to get the beta if you need some testers.

yes very curious and interesting this new ArcX ,As My email got hacked really bad I had to erase and delete my passwords and could not remember how to get back in my ARC account,years of programming seemed lost, was very upset until I used my finger typing memory( yes a real thing) as my brain could not remember the old password but my fingers did after several attempts, All the years of my programs were still there and it made me realize how important ARC really was for my learning journey! Looking forward to the new!