Playdate pre-orders begin in July • Hacker News Board

Re: Playdate pre-orders begin in July

#211

Post by jonny_eh » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #193

Impossible wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there's a modern definition of scam, especially with gamers, which is hyping or marketing a game too well and not completely delivering on promises (often imagined) due to budget constraints, design or technical challenges and often just inflated expectations. This happens with products that a perfectly fine but aren't what people expect, and products that "work" but are buggy or don't deliver all featu…

There's another reason this product doesn't fit the category you've described: they haven't spent countless millions on marketing. They just put up a website, and it's not their fault if the gaming press then turned it into the next big thing. To me, their website comes off as sincere, earnest, and a work-in-progress-- it's kind of like a kickstarter, except with a really great team. They're not setting unreasonable…

> it's kind of like a kickstarter

But without taking orders years in advance.

Re: Playdate pre-orders begin in July

#212

Post by stnmtn » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

rOOb85 wrote: post #181

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting about that? Emulating SNES and Genesis games was fun back in 1997 but really are we not tired of that by now? Just how many times can you go through the emulator dance of downloading all the games then playing each for less than 3 minutes before you give up.

> Just how many times can you go through the emulator dance of downloading all the games then playing each for less than 3 minutes before you give up. What makes this any different?

It's all new games made specifically for this platform? What do you mean?

Re: Playdate pre-orders begin in July

#213

Post by chris_st » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

2ndseq wrote: post #104

caslon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, the medium does become important. Every computer no matter how small can do everything now, and limiting games to a specific platform is for the most part arbitrary at this point. So if you add limitations, or extra buttons! you end up with the rare occurrence of something new! A crank is actually a really cool addition just in terms of experimenting with gameplay.

This is something well understood in the electronic music space. The limitations of the equipment can define entire genres of music. The programmer in me is very excited about doing some dev work on a limited platform.

Indeed. I really love the Kind of Bloop[0] album, an 8-bit tribute to Kind of Blue[1] by Miles Davis (often cited as the best-selling jazz record of all time). Example song here[2].

[0] https://kindofbloop.com [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kind_of_Blue [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSCObIXDCJc

Re: Playdate pre-orders begin in July

#214

Post by beckler » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

fumar wrote: post #50

I am always impressed with the design of Teenage Engineering’s products but they have an air “pure consumerism”. I think this is that taken to its extreme. A toy that has a crank, retro screen, design-driven accessories, and the games are there but not promoted. Compare that to the gameboy which put its games front and center with the selling point of being handheld. Admittedly, I would get the Playdate to put on my…

Well, it sounds like to me, that TE just did the hardware design, and PANIC is really the one making the decisions for the software/games side.

That being said, Teenage Engineering is one of those brands that has massively disappointed me over time. When the OP-1 came out it was a truly innovative, beautiful, and robust synthesizer... Despite that, everything they make now just seems over-hyped, over-priced, and homogeneous.

I mean their most recent "innovations" are, no-joke: a $600 portable AM/FM + BT radio, whose only real feature is a massive buffer so you can rewind or fast forward in real-time, and a robot that dances to music.

They're great at predictable, minimal design, there is no doubt there, but that's about it.

Re: Playdate pre-orders begin in July

#215

Post by ryanmcbride » Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #203

y2bd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, Analogue Pocket, the 200 USD Game Boy hardware emulator that sold out in minutes: https://www.analogue.co/pocket

Out of the box, Pocket is compatible with the 2,780+ Game Boy, Game Boy Color & Game Boy Advance game cartridge library. Pocket works with cartridge adapters for other handheld systems, too. Like Game Gear. Neo Geo Pocket Color. Atari Lynx & more. Completely engineered in two FPGAs.* More clear cut value proposition though, you know what you are getting. With Playdate you are taking a bigger risk on the games, and ge…

scalpers generally don't care about how clear cut the value proposition is. For example they bought up all the game & watch super mario handhelds right away, which has literally only 2 games on it and not enough onboard storage for much more than that. Scalpers still bought them all up. Luckily Nintendo kept shipping them out so you can get them pretty much anywhere still, unlike their amiibos.