Applying limits is a catalyst for creation. Not having to deal with limitless colors, in Panic's Playdate example, frees up to think about gameplay, mechanics, and story instead.

Personally, I think it’s an interesting gimmick, but if I’m being honest I wouldn’t say that dealing with color actually limits my ability to think about other things when developing software/games.

Color does appeal to buyers, though. A B/W game system is doomed to a niche position.

It's made by a company that publishes niche games, in collaboration with a company that designs niche hardware. Finding an interested niche was the goal.

The PlayDate was intentionally designed to be a niche product, so that doesn't really seem to detract at all from the platform.

Why is a niche position bad? Panic's goal isn't to dominate the handheld games market.

It is insanely cool, and fun. For sure it would be a different type of fun with a color screen, and not all to the benefit.

For one thing, they’re somewhat expensive for little toys: $179. I bet a megacorp making 10 million at a time could do it more cheaply, but Panic seems to be doing it in batches of thousands. A backlit color screen would boost that cost. Then they’d need a bigger battery to provide the same life (~8 hours playtime), which would increase cost and maybe size.

Then yes, while the games would be cooler in some ways, they’d also take more time to develop. One nice thing about Playdate gameplay so far is that it feels very pure: just a few controls and an interesting puzzle. They’ve distilled the fun down to as simple an experience as they can.

That $179 price includes 24 newly made games (by that I mean not just tossing some retro roms on the device) by various developers, including some bigger names.

I'm sure those developers are getting a cut of that for compensation for their efforts. Wouldn't be surprised if at least $40-50 of that cost is just going to the developers of those games. Assuming there's 24 developers, that means they're only getting between $1-2 per device sold, that's nothing huge.

Panic have said that the parts alone cost ~$90 per device. That doesn't include assembly, shipping, writing the OS, developing the SDK, etc. Plus the season games. In all, the price seems very reasonable.

I agree, I preordered one. I'm in wave 3, so hopefully I'll get it before the end of the year.

I also already have the gameplay to one of my video games ported to Playdate (using Lua). Still need to improve graphics, add sound, figure out how to make menus look nice with only 1 color graphics, etc., and I wasn't going to release it until I tested it on an actual device, not just the simulator.

I am also in group 3, in the 18000s (order #). I'm still kicking myself because I didn't set an alert and order one right away, but instead waited until the end of the day to put in my order. But I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer.