It's a fidget toy for people with lots of money rather than an actual gaming device. It all makes sense once you see it with that perspective.

It looks like a high quality build with a sharp oled screen and novel controls. A stick on crank for a phone would be silly and feel cheap.

It's not OLED. It's more like one of those LCD watch displays but massively technologically advanced forward.

Ah so it isn't. Still looks quite good in the images. High enough resolution to feel premium.

I've held one in my hand and damn that screen is clear as hell (but reflective) I think it sits somewhere between IPS and OLED for me, and being reflective it's easier to look at.

Panic is into gaming, and distributed Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game.

I look at it as an homage to the Game 'n' Watch. And that was still a game. Does it really need to do everything in the world?

It's a love letter to past times, with little extras. It's made in partnership with Teenage Engineering, which created all sorts of little (and bigger) devices like this, mostly for audio. https://teenage.engineering/

Re 2. I saw a tweet from a developer who ported Doom to the playdate. He made it so you could turn the crank to fire the chain gun.

The display is black and white, yes.

It's only expensive when compared to products churned out by massive megacorporation with economies of scale on their side. This device was made from scratch by a very small company.

The Arduboy is $60. I don't doubt this thing is more capable that the Arduboy, the hardware is probably nicer, but they're both tiny fidget toys for small games- and one is 4x pricier than the other. So it's not like cheaper indie handhelds can't exist.

The Arduboy is more powerful for sure.

I've made a game for the Playdate using the Pulp tool release last month. My summation is the device will be a neat toy for hobby gamedevs.

In specs it certainly isn't.

Apparently the Arduboy is based on the ATmega328. Is writing code in C/C++/Rust fast enough to write full-motion graphically/logically complex (if graphical complexity is even possible on a small display) games on the system, or do you need to implement large chunks in assembly code?

The crank reminds me of my housemates old bass master fishing game. Which I oddly enjoyed.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224827699040

I imagine this will be worlds better.

re: 5: The device is for enthusiast, traditional gamers that buy dedicated hardware. This customer doesn't really play games on their smartphones.

I'd pull the trigger for $199, but with tax and shipping it is $231. I want it but it is just over my price threshold.

The target is nostalgic tech old rich people tired of their iPhones.

Not sure what's the intersection is with people who still play games.

TBH I think game devs will pick it up. There are a lot looking for new restrictions/features that will force them to make fun in different ways.