151–160 of 424 posts
I've ranted many a times about the hypercapitalistic race-to-the-bottom approach that Valve/Epic/etc are taking. This is a breath of fresh air and they have my full support.
This is interesting, but I can think of lots of things I'd put on the side of the device to make it unique besides a crank. It's an oddly specific way to provide analog and/or constant input (if it does indeed crank 360 degrees) from the player. An actual analog stick? A dial? A trigger? A switch lever? A touch sensitive pad? A trackball? Maybe these guys are really into fishing?
The crank is all about "hipster" and "conversation starter". You're supposed to look like a weirdo cranking that, thus be super-cool.
Is this cute? Yeah, absolutely, but there are actually a lot of cute little handheld gaming devices just like it, except they have nicer screens and don't cost $150. Like the Bitboy, Pixel Classic, PocketGo, Pocket Sprite. Even the Micro Arcade series which are credit card sized single-game handheld with full color screens.
Those all appear to either emulate other consoles, or come with games built-in, though. This seems to be closer to the MakeCode consoles discussed elsewhere in these comments, since it sounds like it will allow you to make your own games for it (although it's not clear yet how easy that will be). In that respect, it seems fairly unique to me, if only because it is beautifully designed and polished. It seems like the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It mostly works well on mobile, but the layout results in hilariously big images on desktop. The top unit could benefit from scaling to the viewport height. Right now the grey section is 100% the height of the viewport, meaning that scrolling is not an obvious interaction. Having some yellow and text peeking up could make that more intuitive.
It is ridiculous on a 2560x1440 screen. It seems to be designed for a "10ft television" view distance. Much better at 25% zoom.
Why the name playdate?
It's part of the "gimmick". After the device is released and is available for sale, a new game will be released for it and downloaded automatically each week for the first 12 weeks, when downloaded a little light will light up and you can have small play date with the Playdate.
Between Panic and Teenage Engineering I actually have faith in this being a worthwhile endeavor. From the face of it I would expect this to go the way of the Ouya, but with those two at the helm it could actually be something cool. It's a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant casual mobile gaming space.
Between Switch and a lot of great mobile games I'm not sure how it's stagnant.