You: No!!! You can't spend your money on a toy that is a luxury good, unlike the video games I purchase, which are serious and not hipster trash!!
Me: Hur hur. Crank go brrr.
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Introducing Playdate - A $179 black-and-white handheld with a dozen surprise games. Also, it has a crank.
- Thread starter Meg Cherry
- Start date
- Tech
You: No!!! You can't spend your money on a toy that is a luxury good, unlike the video games I purchase, which are serious and not hipster trash!!
Me: Hur hur. Crank go brrr.
After seeing just a glimpse of was Lucas Pope was doing with this thing last month, I decided that I had to have one. I can't wait to get my hands on this!
dukope.itch.io
Mars After Midnight - Mars After Midnight by dukope
Hey what’s up. My next project is called Mars After Midnight and it’s a small game for Playdate. The Playdate is a lot of fun to work with -- fantastic 1-bit Sharp screen, novel crank input, simpl...
dukope.itch.io
After seeing just a glimpse of was Lucas Pope was doing with this thing last month, I decided that I had to have one. I can't wait to get my hands on this!
Mars After Midnight - Mars After Midnight by dukope
Hey what’s up. My next project is called Mars After Midnight and it’s a small game for Playdate. The Playdate is a lot of fun to work with -- fantastic 1-bit Sharp screen, novel crank input, simpl...
I love this art style so much. Reminds me of Shufflepuck Cafe, and that parallax is just *chef's kiss*
Also, someone give me Shufflepuck Cafe on the Playdate somehow.
Not before they give me Dark Castle, with the crank aiming my rock-throwing arm!
I am unironically interested in shopping at your dollar store.
A unique, pocket-sized handheld device that plays 24 exclusive indie titles that will be released for "free" over the course of twelve weeks with extra features, surprises, future games, and a potential homebrew community to boot.
Yeah, I watched that gif loop so many times when I first saw it, and I'm still impressed with the little details in it!
I'm reminded that I just obsessed over which retro portable to buy. I can't tell you how many reviews I read, deep-dive videos I watched on YouTube, how many comparisons/analyses I ran on value, support, ergonomics, compatibility, build quality, etc., and after all that time, I finally bought one and have this sneaking suspicion that I'm going to mess with it for an hour and then never touch it again. In cases like this, I think I enjoy the research more than actually getting the product.
However, with the Playdate, I did almost zero research, but just the ethos behind/around it immediately attracted me to it, and then once I saw some demos and how developers were reacting to it, that was also infectious and got me hyped. It's so cool seeing developers I love get on board and seeing them talk about it in such exciting ways. I also like that new titles will be automatically delivered to it over time, which will give me a reason to check in on it periodically. Lastly, a glimpse of the development tools has me excited to maybe take a stab at (very) amateur work on it myself, which I haven't felt compelled to do since the Apple IIe days.
The demo in the Playdate "direct" made it seem like Papers Please for kids:After seeing just a glimpse of was Lucas Pope was doing with this thing last month, I decided that I had to have one. I can't wait to get my hands on this!
Mars After Midnight - Mars After Midnight by dukope
Hey what’s up. My next project is called Mars After Midnight and it’s a small game for Playdate. The Playdate is a lot of fun to work with -- fantastic 1-bit Sharp screen, novel crank input, simpl...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeWGukDrc1U&t=455s
It's less a video game console and more of a toy. A fun little gadget.
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It's a $180 toy that comes with 24 games made by notable indie game developers who have created cool games I've previously loved.
I think it's a combination of the "nerds being overly focused on specs and numbers" thing, which is why some people can't fathom why people value Nintendo or Apple hardware, and the tendency of gamers to be extremely price conscious and used to major console vendors selling them hardware at razor-thin margins and with a sort of race to the bottom in software pricing. Like, in recent years book publishers have been shifting the pricing of their "AAA" hardcovers from $30.00 to $35.00, and you just don't see that dominate the discussion on book forums to anywhere near the same extent that the change from $60 games to $70 games has here. This is the same site where people regularly say things like "gaming is a really expensive hobby" and it's just not, it's one of the world's most popular hobbies because it is so accessible. Literally almost everything else that adults can do as a hobby is more expensive than buying Skyrim and playing it for a hundred hours.
I think part of the weird pushback is that the Playdate is basically the first system a lot of people here are seeing that isn't trying to be value-priced hardware. Like, even a $500 PS5 or XSX is still sold on the basis of it giving you a great value of hardware for the money. This is trying to be something different and fun and interesting and not necessarily sold on the basis of whether it's a good deal or not, compared to, like, a Switch. It's sold on, like, "do you think this experience of 24 weird indie games and a crank and a 1-bit screen is worth $180?" And to a lot of adults, it is.
It's basically the exact opposite of the Steam Deck.
You're right, basically nobody who is buying this is, like, deciding between buying this or a Switch. If they want a Switch they probably already have one. They're deciding between buying this and a $200 LEGO set, or a new pair of kicks, or a night out with friends. A lot of adults have income and can buy toys like this, and this is aimed at them.
It's okay for not everything to be for everybody. That's a sign that the gaming market is maturing.
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Panic have always made stuff that seems a bit more expensive but is immensely satisfying to own and use. They even made an amazing FTP client that was well worth buying, despite all the 'just fine' free options. This thing cost me triple the price of the RG351P but I guarantee it will be satisfying as all heck to carry around and play on the go.
I have reservations about the invitation-only publishing approach, especially as it feels somewhat cliquey, but I respect Panic for controlling the initial experiences of the device and setting it up for a healthy life in 2023, when it reaches maturity.
I have reservations about the invitation-only publishing approach, especially as it feels somewhat cliquey, but I respect Panic for controlling the initial experiences of the device and setting it up for a healthy life in 2023, when it reaches maturity.
That's right on the money. Add to that the FOMO-driven hype culture at the heart of gaming. People need to proudly declare that, not only are they not interested in the Playdate, but they can't imagine anybody being interested in it. That way, they don't feel like they're missing out. The alternative is to be self-aware about what you care about, and understand that other people care about other things, without needing to denigrate their interests.
Yeah, it is a little weird seeing people pop into threads for this and be like "I just don't understand the appeal." Like, I don't hop into FIFA or NBA2K or CoD threads and go "I just don't understand the appeal of this game!" and then bolt.
I'll tell you what, assemble the same console with similar specs (that screen is important, so start there), pull together a lineup of 24 unique games exclusive to your console, and then sell it to us for $179. Easy peasy, right? You will surely make a killing!
I said exactly these words in an interview that is not yet published.
High five!
Excellent points.
To add my own spin on these thoughts, despite it legitimately being a very cheap hobby, the pricing curve for existing products is so flat no matter your entry point. A 12 year old kid and a 30 year old basically have the exact same products marketed toward them, and there is little to no pricing segmentation. There is no room really to continuously tinker and slowly move to upmarket niches as you get more obsessed and interested in specifics of the hobby, because there basically is no up-market! So people are anchored at these value oriented price points.
I actually think a sizeable chunk of Nintendo's resurgence with the Switch is attributable to demographic luck in a way. The demographics turned in such a way that they can sell directly to nostalgic older millenials and xenials who have disposable income (and/or children of their own who they want to relive their youth through). Whether the thing is $50 more or less in either direction is kind of irrelevant to this crowd. Even getting a few hours of fun here or there is good enough. The hobby is so young that there wasn't enough of a base of these people in prior decades (they sure weren't selling to Silent Gen and Boomers!), but its growing up and attracting more and more older people with money they're willing to spend on a lark, rather than kids begging for christmas gifts. The Playdate fits into that niche.
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Right. Like, if you look at LEGO, you have the sets that are aimed at their primary audience of kids, based on things like Star Wars and Super Mario, that are generally like $30-100, and then you have their sets that they design for adults, based on things like Friends and Seinfeld and realistic automobiles, that are like $120 plus and that plus goes quite high. But with gaming, you don't really see that sort of variation in most global markets. Rockstar isn't really like "well, we put so much into Red Dead Redemption II that we're charging $100 for it," even if it might be worth that to some people. There's more of a ceiling. It's more like a movie ticket, where the price for a ticket to Avengers Endgame is the same as the price for a ticket to Missing Link.
If any of you are interested, Panic has a new episode of their podcast all about the weird genesis and making of the Playdate, and its decade-long journey from "maybe a clock?" to an indie game console, and it's super well done. Also, if you listen on their website, you get to see their retro audio player graphics. Listen
That retro audio player is Audion, the Mac MP3 player Panic made in the pre-iTunes days. It was great. The first Mac software to really have full transparency and antialiasing and drop shadows in its user interface, a few years before MacOS X came out and made that the standard.
Except in the EU and elsewhere, it's a 200 Euro/$240+ toy, and sure, while it all technically adds up, you can't tell me that doesn't put a different perspective on it. Especially when it was first announced as a 150$ toy (which, also, is not what I'd consider cheap or impulse buy range).
I love the idea behind it and was very much looking forward to buy this, but I can totally understand how people are put off by the price, even more so when it almost steps into regions occupied by mainstream consoles. Price is also the sole reason I decided to not preorder and see how this plays out over time. The Dollar Store comarison however is ridiculous of course.
I was a bit drunk when pre-orders went live so I just overlooked it in the moment because I wanted to secure one, but what's the deal with that?! How much would it cost in America after shipping and taxes? Because maybe I will just preorder it and sent it to my family's house there.
Wholly dependent of your choice of shipping provider and declarations i think. Just ordered a ton of game boy stuff and it's like 10 bucks shipping altogether.
under "Playdate x 1" (or 2 if you got 2), it'll say a date. mine says "Late 2021," for example.
Your shipping was about $21, the rest was your VAT.
If you cancel and reorder, you'll get it later, have to pay double shipping and maybe pay the VAT anyway when customs inspects the package no?
Shipping to Massachusetts was about $15. My total for the console + cover was $214.38.
...along those lines, I'm only realizing now it's saying I was charged $0 in taxes. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be included in the price. Huh.
Late 2021 is the best shipping guesstimate you can have at this point, right? I jumped on the minute preorders opened but I got stuck on line and didn't get an order until the 8000s
I had tax added when shipping to California, but not when shipping to Pennsylvania. I think it varies by individual state law.
I remember the FTP client, Transmit! I used to own it in the early 2000s on my PowerBook. It was a neat app.
I only found out relatively recently that the company behind Transmit is making Playdate.
Yup. They haven't specified any further for that initial 20K batch.
Yeah, state tax law is weird like that.
For a long while, Washington State residents were the only ones getting dinged by sales tax on Amazon orders because the company is headquartered here.
interested, but I wait for more news in the developer section, about how, with what to develop on it
Yup.
Something a lot of people might not know (it's a famous story among old-school Mac nerds, because it's so good) is that Apple was interested in buying Panic to use Audion as the basis of iTunes. (It's funny to think about this now, because we know how everything ends, but Steve Jobs was furious that Apple was so late to the digital music revolution, having been overly focused on digital home video, and was interested in buying a product off-the-shelf to help Apple catch up.) Panic ended up not being able to make the meeting with Apple, because they were already exploring selling the company to...AOL (this was the year 2000 remember, the peak of the dot-com boom, and AOL was on top of the world and giving everybody giant bags of money), and Apple bought a different product from a different indie team, SoundJam MP, to use as the basis of iTunes instead. The interesting thing is that Jobs actually sent Panic one of his famously terse emails after the AOL deal fell through and after Apple bought SoundJam, asking Panic if they'd still be interested in joining Apple. This time Panic took the meeting and, perhaps naively thinking that Audion would still have a market after Apple introduced their own free iTunes, decided not to sell. But the meeting still might have saved Panic: Cabel told Jobs they were getting ready to work on a digital photo management app for their next project, and Jobs straight up told them "yeah, don't do that one." After this meeting, Panic seemed to focus more on niche products and dev tools that Apple was less likely to want to build into their own OS. Wise!
It's weird to think about how different things would be if Panic sold. No Coda, no Nova. Would Untitled Goose Game still exist? But something they discuss in the podcast is that they're really happy with being an independent company that hasn't really taken outside investment, because it allows them to do unexpected things like decide to publish indie games, or spend a decade making a weird clock/Game & Watch/handheld game console thing. I'm sure it's one of those "what could have been" things that Cabel and Steven idly think about sometimes, though. Would they be happier if they had made iTunes? Would they be happier if they had become dot-com zillionaires? Who knows, but my gut says they're probably happier where they are right now, in Portland making a yellow Game & Watch thing with a crank and surprise games and putting that out into the world. It's hard to imagine a product that is more Cabel, or more Panic.
Despite owning and using Transmit back in the day, I didn't know about this. Thanks for sharing.
This thing looks so cool! I also really love the aesthetic. I loved the game boy camera and printer back in the day for my journals which is why I bought a heat printer for use nowadays, and this screen and games really bring out those vibes. And I like how they open op de dev tools for this thing. I wonder what cool games the community come up with.
I really want one but can't really afford one now, this will be available a while right?
Edit: omg, some people REALLY hate this thing haha! You don't have to buy it fortunately!
I really want one but can't really afford one now, this will be available a while right?
Edit: omg, some people REALLY hate this thing haha! You don't have to buy it fortunately!
See that costs me $268. I'm already in the 2022 crowd, so I might just email them and ask if they can ship it to America instead to my parents place because that's a huge price difference imo. It would be in SC so I'm sure there's a bit of sales tax, but still.
Yes, the link above contains more details to the famous story.
I can answer those questions because I'm already developing for it. I use Lua but you can also use C, and the SDK comes with docs, examples, tools, including a Simulator that can run your code without a device (best to run on device to gauge performance though). All for Mac/Windows/Linux. Should get public release between now and device shipping.
As far as I know we don't really have any concrete information on any one game's particular length. However, since some of these games have a narrative focus (such as Lost Your Marbles, Saturday Edition, and Demon Quest 85), I would expect them to be a few hours long. Other games, like Whitewater Wipeout, appear to be a more classic, score-based style of game. That type of game is generally infinitely replayable (yet you will probably be able to finish a single run in a matter of minutes).
At this point it is anyone's guess, but I would expect there to be a wide range of playtimes provided by these games (with a number of them having a ton of replayability).
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I thought you could power the device with the crank 🤦🏻 still a neat little idea but the power thing is what really drew me to it.
Yes I would use LUA too.
So you confirm that you can script and use all the features with LUA, even the crank?
