you could buy two retroids for less than the cost of this novelty garbage and you now have a multiplayer gaming experience and a linux environment with proven SDK's and interoperability but heres the dealbreaker: no crank.
Nowhere does Playdate indicate it is anything but single player or that it currently has any games, but im sure 'some famous people' doing stuff is cool too.
> Here's the truly unique bit. Playdate isn't just an empty system. Once you set up your Playdate, you'll start to receive two brand new games... every week. For 12 weeks.
Having novelty doesn't make it garbage, and yes, paying for 24 new games to get made is generally more expensive than pirating Dreamcast ROMs.
"The Season" is frankly just a season pass with more steps. until any of these games get made and reviewed, its an empty system that doesnt even ship with a game.
FYI: NONE of the games listed on their season page have a release date.
Granted, this is taking them at their word, but they're certainly claiming that they'll be shipping two of those games every week for the first 12 weeks after the system ships.
That's a release date, even if a slightly amorphous one keyed off of a specific event that we don't know the exact timing for yet.
They have failed to adequately explain this detail: the season starts when you power up the machine, delivering two games a week for 12 weeks. So the games release when they first start shipping the first units.
Oh, that's interesting. I had been assuming it'd be a more universal release schedule. I wonder how the people getting their devices after the early orders have already received all the games are going to feel about it.
> you could buy two retroids for less than the cost of this
Yes! I could buy many assortments of things for the cost of a Playdate but I want a Playdate. It sounds interesting to me in a way that 2 retroids or 200 packs of gum doesn't.
> some famous people' doing stuff is cool too.
Yes! I find it interesting and a project I'm interested in supporting even if it ends up being disappointing.
A retroid is an off-the-shelf quad core CPU running android and an emulator. The playdate is an actual custom console platform inspired by retro designs.
Modern consoles are so powerful that an indie dev is rarely limited in what they can do, which might sound like a good thing, but there's a reason Orson Welles once said, "the enemy of art is the absence of limits".
Think of it like a film maker spending more money to use old film/lenses. Yeah, using the phone in their pocket and windows movie maker would be cheaper and higher quality, but that's not the point.
I am also very curious what MP experiences will be possible with the WiFi/BT on a retro handheld.
