Just no. Please be smarter than this. Take the money you are going to toss in the toilet designing and creating this oddity and send it to someone that needs it. What do I know, its probably the next iPhone. You crank it and the front facing camera slowly pops out....
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App Developer Panic Announces New $149 'Playdate' Game System Coming in 2020
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Panic, a company known for developing apps for iOS and macOS, today announced plans to enter the hardware market with the launch of the Playdate, a new handheld gaming system.
Go read Daring Fireball. Gruber’s enthusiasm for this guaranteed failure is hilarious.
This is clearly not competing at any level in the hand held gaming market. It really looks like a work of love on the owners part. Just an experimental foray into hardware for fun. Im sure it will be a very limited run that wont continue.
Time will tell. One man’s post is another man’s claim chowder.
You’ve got to admire the guy. He can’t exactly not shill for one of his best friends and this is really going above and beyond. On the other hand if his enthusiasm is genuine then he’s really lost the plot
I’m going to go with the unpopular opinion of, “I Don’t hate this.” It’s different and unique. It would even be cool just to collect. Do I think it’s a money maker? No.
Good lord, it's not backlit? Clearly this was designed by people that didn't live through the horror that was early Gameboys.
I’ll take your word for it rather than visit his site!
Hate to be a hater but this looks like a flop. I kind of feel sorry for Panic. It’s like a thought bubble idea and probably should’ve stayed that way.
But one guaranteed way to sell some: make it limited, or at least tell people that. People lose all rationality when a product is limited.
My opinion would be similar to yours if it were $100 cheaper.
They are in Portland. The tragically hip locals will be riding their penny-farthings from miles around to pick up this retro device.
I sincerely have no clue why everyone is flipping out over this thing. John Gruber literally said it was like the next iPhone, no hyperbole. It seems like some weird app dev Apple enthusiast circlejerk like what the hell am i missing here? Wheres the killer element thats stowed away? Why should i give a **** about a $150 black and white handheld console with 12 games? Cool, they wrote their own OS. But I just dont get it
Panic isn’t trying to compete with Nintendo.
Don't think too hard to make this fit in a box. Panic isn't trying to be the next Nintendo. People buy a lot of fun gadgets for a couple hundred bucks. This is just one more of those gadgets.
I love the idea of games coming up one per week, with no pre-announcement. This kind of expectation is what makes subscription boxes so popular and Panic knows it. I'd be happy to pay $30 for a "season" of 12 games every few months. If they do this right — and Panic has a reputation for doing things right — they can turn this into a recurring revenue model. If that means that Panic gets to keep making their amazing software, then I'm in.
Black and white? Really?
Maybe for $30-40 but at $150, they’ve definitely crossed over into you-gotta-be-kidding-me territory.
This might be possible for a Chinese company to do, but (if the device is real - I still have my doubts) to the point of getting this device in production they already spend 7-digit figures. To break even on the device they probably have to sell somewhere north of 50.000 units in the first year, that's an amazing amount for such a company and device.
It depends on the games. If they’re fun games (and this is Panic, so I think the that games will be great) that you can play in a week before being surprised by the next secret game to pop up the following week, then this in fact has the potential to make money.
Notice that Panic is calling the 12 games “a season”. That implies that further seasons are expected. You get the first season of 12 weeks with the purchase of the console. Further seasons would be subscribed to.
People subscribe to boxes of surprise items in droves. It’s a big thing. Paying about $30 bucks for a season is reasonable and it creates a recurring revenue flow for Panic. It’s brilliant if you think of what’s going on behind the visible part of a hardware release. The model it is far more interesting.
I hear what you’re saying, but Panic’s need to cover their costs doesn’t translate to customers’ willingness to (seemingly) overpay for a black and white, non-backlit device.
But it does look kind of cool; it could very well find a sufficient customer base willing to pay $150. And it would probably only take one hit game to blow up to where it becomes a thing—think HQ Trivia, for example. I do think the price will limit its appeal though.
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