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'Playdate' Handheld Game System Now Available for Pre-Order

At first I was like "wow this looks annoyingly hipster, but I'll give it a chance" ... and then I read it's black and white. Yikes. It IS annoyingly hipster by design. 🤣
 
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cmaier said:
I believe the point is to give you time to enjoy, or at least try out, each couple of games as they come out. Sort of the same as the difference between Netflix dumping all episodes at the same time vs. HBO releasing an episode at a time.
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Delivering software in small bites would be wise from the customer's point of view. I remember decades ago when all the retro games for emulations were suddenly available in one day. I suddenly didn't enjoy it anymore, it was too much.

However, I don't trust the people who brought this device to market with that much educational soul-searching.
Their young marketing will try to make it seem that way, though. Awkward.
They have not been able to bring their development to the market in a meaningful way through Corona and China, they will probably have run out of money, and so they simply have too little software on offer. Sorry, that's probably how it looks.

And there will hardly be any more for this DOA.
 
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Morgenland said:
Delivering software in small bites would be wise from the customer's point of view. I remember decades ago when all the retro games for emulations were suddenly available in one day. I suddenly didn't enjoy it anymore, it was too much.

However, I don't trust the people who brought this device to market with that much educational soul-searching. They have not been able to bring their development to the market in a meaningful way through Corona and China, they will probably have run out of money, and so they simply have too little software on offer. Sorry, that's probably how it looks.

And there will hardly be any more for this DOA.
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What? Panic is one of the oldest Mac software companies and its developers are very well-known and reputable.
 
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cmaier said:
What? Panic is one of the oldest Mac software companies and its developers are very well-known and reputable.
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They have already made a lot of mistakes, are you trying to say that everything there turned to gold?
You and e.g. turbineseaplane, farleysmaster et. al. probably know that best.
 
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I can see the nostalgic appeal to those of us that grew up with GameBoy, but I wouldn’t buy one of these. I’ve got emulators for this and I don’t even use them lol
 
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WoodpeckerBaby said:
Is there anything in this yellow box that an iPhone cannot achieve, with or without a standard gaming controller?
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Well the games appear to be exclusives, so playing the games is probably the top of the list. But I also don’t think that beating the iPhone is the point of this device. It looks like a fun piece of hardware with some unique game experiences. Is that really such an outlandish proposition?
 
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I'm glad folks are interested in checking it out...

For me, I have my original GameBoy still (from 1990) for when I'm in the mood for this sort of fix.

Actually, I think I have my Game Gear also (loved that thing -- at the time)
 
rpmurray said:
The Playdate makes the Steam Deck look like an ass sandwich.
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I just watched a video about it and it seems like nothing more than a gadget to keep on your desk and pick up every once in a bit.
The crank pretty much makes sure this thing will never catch on and part of me feels that's kind of the point. If you're a game nerd or like to try out all new tech, I guess it's interesting.
But it's certainly not nostalgic. I don't know why people keep saying that. I've lived through and experienced every single era of video games and pretty much had them all and this in no way gives me even the slightest bit of nostalgia.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
I think people are conflating the nostalgia concept with the PlayDate being "retro" in it's capabilities and features (B&W screen, small and minimal form factor and inputs, etc).
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I don’t see why you think this couldn’t evoke feelings of nostalgia? It certainly does for me. I think it has a lot to do with age and when you experienced things. For example, I played on a gameboy when I was 10-12ish and this was a very formative part of my gaming experience. Seeing this and watching the videos brings back good memories of those games and those times in my life. If that’s not nostalgia I don’t know what is. It’s obviously also a retro-styled device, but that doesn’t mean it can’t do both.

but anyway, I should probably stop posting about this thing, people are going to start thinking I work for Panic and I don’t even intend on ordering one 🙃
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Ask yourself why that's your kneejerk reaction.

Whether games are fun or not is not determined by their graphics, as much as Microsoft, Sony, Nvidia, Alienware, and even Apple would like you to believe otherwise.

I personally am not interested at this time. I'd like to hear from reviewers about how fun the games are, how much lasting value they have (will the game be fun for 30 hours or will it get stale before then), and how well does the hardware hold up (does it seem likely the hardware will hold up to being used for an hour a day for 5 years?)

At a lower price, say $20, maybe I'd gamble on something so unknown. At $180, we're over halfway to being able to just buy a Switch, which is a much more known quantity.
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Exactly why I’m asking myself why I would spend $180.00 on this, if I still have two PSPs with a ton of games.
 
macsplusmacs said:
After the Steam Deck has been shown (and ordered by myself), there is NO interest in this from me. This is just a gimmick. (a too highly priced gimmick)

Feel free to differ in opinion of course.
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Am I on the Engadget. Why is This on a macrumors site.
 
boss.king said:
I don’t see why you think this couldn’t evoke feelings of nostalgia?
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We have a different definition of nostalgia I guess?

I have nostalgic feelings from gaming in that period from the games themselves, the specific devices and the feelings of using them and limitations and specific features of the time that contributed to the feelings and memories.

For example...just the feeling of my gameboy in my hand and Tetris on screen can literally teleport me to a spot in life and a few physical locations.

A completely new device, with new unknown games, a new form factor, capabilities that didn’t exist back then, brand new interactions (crank)...

Literally nothing about that maps to my nostalgic feelings of specific games on specific systems with distinctive usage experiences and hundreds of hours of muscle and brain memory from a time in life back then.

The playdate is all new...

Hopefully a new generation forges many formative and lifelong gaming memories with it...but nothing about it teases out nostalgia from my gameboy era for me. My Gameboy and my gameboy games do that.

(And other systems...but each uniquely based upon the when and what and specifics of each time and system)
 
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Very cute thing. But of course some of you don’t understand this is a cool object for a few nerds, not a regular console.
If I was richer (much richer actually) I’d definitely buy this.
 
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