But... why? It's so janky. Looks painful to hold, the games look like crappy flash games in monochrome, and the crank is just going to break off. What am I missing?
It's a combination of nostalgia for a (largely imagined) bygone era of handheld devices, plus the fact that two relatively famous boutique hardware manufacturers/developers are involved (Panic! and Teenage Engineering). People will buy this for $180 for the same reason people still buy TE's OP-1 synthesizer for well over $1k when there are more feature-rich devices available for half the price or less. They're paying for the design, the ecosystem, the aesthetic, and to some extent, as a "lifestyle" purchase.
Buy a DE-10 Nano and get MisterFPGA running on it. It’s been great replaying arcade perfect classics like Pac-Man and Space Invaders and also being able to dive into classic SNES and MegaDrive games that I missed out on the first time around. Exploring some other totally missed systems like TurboGrafx which basically never got sold here or only at totally crazy prices has been fantastic as well. It’s got an amazing & friendly community building up around it as well.
You've probably heard of Panic, they made Coda, Nova, Prompt, there's another one that's escaping me right now... and a bunch of other apps. Untitled Goose Game.
I'm assuming the worst about a product I've never seen, perhaps, but only because I've used plenty of other products at a similar price point that seem MUCH better: Switch, Vita, various Android phones -- all mature technologies using much better hardware designed with proper adult ergonomics and with huge game libraries. And then for not much more you're into Xbox Series S and Oculus Quest 2 territory. Or for much less, you can get the $60 NES Classic/Sega Genesis Mini/Atari Flashback X with actual proven, authentically historic games for some real nostalgia. Or make your own MAME/Dolphin/etc. cabinet in any form factor you want. I got a Carmen San Diego portable console as an xmas stocking stuffer last year, and THAT thing was awesome, featuring surprisingly retro but functional controls, a beautiful screen, a silly Mac Classic lookalike case, and the full fidelity of the old game. It also cost $20, not $200. Any of those would offer more gameplay and a tremendously better value.
This thing would've been cool at $50, because it's probably built better than the $20 no-name Chinese consoles (https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...). But it definitely reminds me of them, especially with its catalog of super generic games that seem like Wii/Mario Party-style mini games... that you have to wait weeks for. At least those no-name Chinese ripoffs come with dozens to hundreds of games to start with.
This whole thing just screams "marketing gimmick" all around, like so many junky Kickstarter gadgets that come and go to much fanfare (Ouya comes to mind). Why the hell does it cost so much? It's like someone put together an Arduino tech demo and slapped a designer case on it and marked it up 10x. shrug
Again, maybe I'm just not the target market. I'm just struggling to understand who is. Someone else explained it: the makers of these things are apparently famous designers in some circles (music synths, boutique apps). Good for them, I guess, but for a regular ol' gamer like me, no thanks... for portable gaming, I'm much more excited about the Steam Deck or even Stadia/GeForce Now/xCloud on Android + a gamepad adapter.
I say this to make a point, not to be rude: I am bored by your enumeration of ways to play games that offer "better value" than the Playdate. You are describing platforms that are already open to me, and games that I have already played.
If the Playdate can deliver to me something novel and genuinely fun and engaging, that's the value. Will it? That remains to be seen, but it's what Panic is selling.
I can offer a slightly different reason for getting one (I preordered one): learning. I have published a few mobile apps, and have toyed with the idea of making a game but haven't felt quite "ready" for that yet. The extremely low barrier to entry on the PD ($180 gets the hardware, SDK is free, and the platform is open so you can distribute anyway you want) is the primary reason I am excited about it. the limitations of the platform just feel less daunting.
I have no idea what it would take to play a homemade game on a Switch or Xbox (the two consoles I own). As for Steam, I can probably make that work but at that point I'd just use the Mac App Store or my own site. In this regard the PD just feels more .... welcoming/simpler I suppose. So at least for me, $180 doesn't seem crazy.
I also give Panic a lot of "benefit of the doubt" as I have been using their software for two decades and know that they make quality things and care deeply about the overall experience and customer satisfaction and such; so the investment feels far less risky than if it was some random startup (I had never heard of Teenage Engineering before this product, so they were not a factor in this regard).
I don't think your take is wrong; just that this device doesn't strike your fancy and that is perfectly fine. But maybe my motivations behind buying one can reveal one possible reason for someone to willing choose it over (or in my case, in addition to) the other options.
You've made much of the $179 price in your various posts in this thread. I think the answer to that is that you're on a forum for highly paid professionals who can afford an extra gaming device at this price point. I don't think many people are deciding between a Switch and a Playdate. Probably all of the preorders are people who already own a Switch and/or Xbox. If gaming is your primary hobby and you have a good income, this is not unreasonable-- people with other hobbies (hunting, fishing, traveling, scuba diving, photography, flying, etc) will sometimes spend more than $179 per hour of engaging in said hobby and no one bats an eye.
It's also not a competitor to the NES classic or any of the third party emulator-based devices. I've already played those games back when the NES was around, then played them again on various emulators. I'm ready for something different.
I think the Ouya is a good comparison. The Playdate's story is about recruiting indie developers more effectively than the Ouya did, and organizing game distribution differently (seasonal releases instead of an app store). The fact that the Playdate sold 20k units in 17 minutes tells me that maybe they're right. But on the other hand, the Ouya sold 200k units over its lifetime and still failed so maybe 20k is not that impressive after all?
You also made several other objections: uncomfortable to hold, crank is likely to break, adults are likely to get bored in 10 minutes. None of the reviews out so far have supported any of these objections. The ArsTechnica review is pretty comprehensive[1], but there are a handful of others floating around.
I also think it's telling that you compared "Crankin Time Travel Adventure" (Playdate game) to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time in another of your posts. A much better comparison would be to the indie game Braid. Apologies if I'm reading too much into this, but if you haven't heard of Braid it makes me wonder if you're more of a traditional gamer than an indie gamer that this is targeted at?
This product wasn’t designed for people like you I suppose. For example, there are lots of people who are excited about this that aren’t excited about the Steam Deck. Gaming is a big market with lots of niche submarkets.
The internet will tell you that eating at a Michelin star restaurant is a waste of money because you could just go to McDonald's. Personally, I think both have their place.
There are some very novel, occasionally brilliant things on HN. This just doesn't happen to be one of them, IMO. Fun at $50, extremely overpriced at nearly $200 considering the competition. No real innovation. A crank that rips off Sands of Times's primary mechanic, except you have to take your hands off the already tiny thing to crank a tinier crank? Cool, I guess...? To each their own.
Thanks for letting us all know, in no uncertain terms, how you feel about this thing that you don't want to buy. It's very important that we all hear about how you don't like this thing you haven't tried.
I’m possibly not the most rational when it comes to these things as I have one on order, as well as an Analog Pocket, ZX Spectrum Next and Switch Deck. The price point seems fairly reasonable to me when you consider hardware and software development costs, plus overheads like marketing, infrastructure etc. It’s unlikely to ever be seriously mass market.
Compare the cost to a PS5 game like the recent Ratchet & Clank - the RRP in the UK is £70. I know my 3 year old and I will easily get £200 of comparable value from this, even if it is a bit janky and gimmicky. I’m also keen to support some of these random projects as they seem to have some real passion driving them. As I said, maybe I’m not totally objective, but i’m hopeful there’ll be a couple of real gems in the games they have coming out on this. I’m sure we’ll have a few weekends of good fun playing about with the SDK making some stuff as well.
If they just put the games on any indie storefront and allowed demos, videos, reviews, etc. like any other game, I'd be thrilled to support them. But locking them into a 1-bit $200 gimmick? That's not a good way to get their passion project out. Dwarf Fortress, on the front page these same days... now THAT's a passion project. Arguably X-plane too. Both of which deliver tremendous value for pennies compared to this.
