Playdate

Yep. If this launched naked as a ‘future investment’ well that’s just silly. But the pitch is clearly, ‘we paid people to make a dozen games specifically for this’ ‘oh and sure hack it or something’ it really wants to be a self-contained thing.

At least I, the person cynical about the Ouya from day 1 of that cursed kickstarter, hope nobody is looking at this from the outside as a new ‘platform’ to launch their games.

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Can’t you not back light e-ink? Aren’t the screens opaque?

this honestly is a big part of what makes it appealing to me

pretty much all content is platform agnostic these days thanks to improved tools. I’m definitely ready for a platform whose selling point is not that anyone can develop for it, but that it has games specifically made for its idiosyncrasies and limitations. I appreciate a lot that the design of this machine leans into that idea.

I don’t see this thing becoming a huge deal with hundreds of games and that’s fine. I hope that it might pave the way for alternatives in game design and hardware, which I feel like is going to be a lot more relevant if/when cloud gaming takes over and the AAA gaming experience gets even more standardized.

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i don’t think it has an e-ink screen.

also, front light, back light, you know whatever, i just want to see it in the dark.

also, if they were asking me for silly dream suggestions my suggestion would be to just have a regular full color oled and then restrict the gamedevs in software to say 3 shades of grey and one selectable full-strength accent color.

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Yes!

And speaking of the Pocket Operators, embracing their weirdness was the entire point.

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if I were to make a handheld console like this I would almost certainly not make it open source. Instead I’d find ways to load it with unique hardware features and gimmicks, (maybe something like dedicated audio hardware with an API for people to program sequenced music instead of using compressed oggs or whatever, maybe throw on some kind of silly input device taken from an old arcade game or something) and work to get good indie developers involved to help show off what that kind of design can produce. which is more or less what they are doing here and I think that’s good.

I honestly don’t think it’s economically viable to have something like this be a totally open mass market aiming device. I don’t think there’s demand for that. It may as well be aimed at niche audiences and cater to that. obviously mistakes were made with the ouya but I feel like even if that project had been well executed it probably would have failed in the exact same way.

if anything the playdate is probably “too niche” in a lot of ways but I think it’s super cool that they do it and I hope it succeeds enough for an actual market for this kind of thing to emerge.

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Suddenly occurred to me that I’m delighted by the fact that this is a new handheld that is not primarily (or secretly primarily) being pitched as a portable emulation box.

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By the way the media kit does specify there is a Lua-based SDK for this but unclear if it will ever become publicly available and it is Mac-exclusive (because Panic is a Mac development shop)

Also hilarious to see the mismatch between people in the gaming world who find it too expensive and people in the Apple world who find it surprisingly inexpensive

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Yeah, the more I think about this device, the more I like it and disagree with my kneejerk reactions. So much of the space around video games has been driven either officially or darkly by an ideology of platform agnosticism (which I largely sympathize with and promote myself) that ultimately flattens the capacity for differentiation between platforms. The idea of purposefully putting something out that’s going to have a carefully curated catalog of platform-specific games is both the oldest story in handheld gaming and somehow radical for 2019.

I mean, if we can easily make and distribute our own homebrew, that’s pretty cool, too, and if it’s as neat as I’m thinking it is, I’d maybe like to play around with what that crank can do so I might finally attempt to learn Lua. But I’m digging the experimental spirit behind the device and its games as presented so far the more I reflect on it.

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Also it’s not e-ink

Playdate’s 2.7-inch (68mm) screen is a unique, black-and-white, low-power LCD from Sharp, with a resolution of 400 × 240.

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Everything I learn about this thing seems like the point of this thing isn’t to enjoy playing its games, but to be seen owning one

a new goof gameboy from mid-2000s mac all stars and the ikea of music toys def. is making me feel seen

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I hope to own one and never be seen owning one.
Single player games are private.
Never gonna let anyone see me crank.

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Gonna literally keep it in my underwear and only play it in the bathroom.

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also, hey teenage eng.: is this why we haven’t seen that ikea turntable you promised years ago? i forgive you

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can you envision any product created by respected niche artists and marketed as such that you wouldn’t feel this way about

Definitely

This thing though, reads like playing games on it was literally the last thing on the priority list. It feels like it’s designed to be a status toy for people who have a pathological need to be seen as well-off but whimsical and unaffected. The Rolex for the elusive Rich Millennial

Are you talking about the Originx?

http://www.lovehulten.com/originx.html

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I’m really confused because I’m pretty sure that despite gaming’s market saturation, being seen playing a video game console in public is the sole province of the Fucking Loser.

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(And as a person who does play his 3DS and PSP on buses sometimes, I believe this is how it should be.)

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