Panic has a history of delivering thoughtful, well-made software. Their initial foray into games (Firewatch, Untitled Goose Game, Nour) were all excellent and novel. Combine that with Teenage Engineering's similar novel and excellent track record with hardware design and you've got a very interesting product to those that like Panic's software and/or like good hardware design. If nothing else this product will be novel and well considered.

If that's not your cup of tea, cool. But there's a lot here for several communities.

> Their initial foray into games (Firewatch, Untitled Goose Game, Nour) were all excellent and novel.

Note that Panic hasn't developed any of those games; they published them.

Right. True.

Continuing that trend, nearly all of PlayDate's announced games are also externally developed and (obviously) published by Panic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console)#Games

See also: ClockworkPi, DevTerm, GameShell / OpenPyra, etc.

Seems to be an emerging successful model: take the revenues from a game/software product and use it to bootstrap a hardware company.

They could release just the software then, which would run fine on Android and iOS machines (which by the way offer way more value for people who appreciate good hardware and good software) Who needs more e-waste?

The hardware is the whole point of the endeavour.

The playmate has a unique interface with its wind up arm thing. I would assume all the already made launch games will use it

Not all the games for the Playdate use the crank, but a lot do.

They could have sold the crank as an extension for iPhones or Android phones.

I agree. In a chip shortage, we should be reassessing exactly what devices need the chips, and priorities. I am very unexcited by this product, it seems practically useless. Tiger Electronics Handhelds indeed.

The steam deck (a real linux handheld computer) on the other hand, gimme gimme gimme

Okay, but people want different things. If you were to ask me, I would much rather ”reassess” the Steam Deck — a device in which I have no interest, made by a company with a poor hardware track record — than the Playdate — a unique device with interesting exclusives made by two companies I like a lot.

The story is less about the device, and more about the chip shortage. Having to wait two years for a CPU is just crazy, and it’s interesting to watch the hoops that these companies have to go through in order to ship products. I don’t know anything about the device itself, but do you find it interesting to watch how do chip shortage is affecting different manufacturers.

People get super upset when you say this, but like much of Panic's other hardware (like their Mini-ITX case) you're also paying for the mythos.

Like I said from the get-go that most of these will be used as desk ornaments (albeit pretty and functional ones)

Not long after Panic announced a dock with a pen holder.

They know their market, people with a lot of disposable income and a want to a showpiece that's not as flashy as gold pen or something

You're confusing Panic (the software/video game company behind this device's concept and software) with Teenage Engineering (a Swedish hardware company that designed the device)

Teenage Engineering has a variety of products unrelated to this game console, including the ITX case.

Sorry you're right, but my comment stands word for word with the name replaced

Teenage Engineering is behind the physical device, which is what represents most of what I'm describing here

I can see why it's cool and the me from 15 years ago might have bought one. But the current me just tires of more useless crap constantly being built that will just end up in someone's junk drawer 3 months from arrival and in the landfill years later.

I think it's like that statistics about most of purchased Steam games not being played or something like that. You buy an idea that you could have enjoyed this device.

There's apparently a pretty big market for plastic doodads that do the same thing your computer can, but with a crank. It's like they ripped a page straight out of Apple's playbook and made an iPod for gaming.