Minnesänger wrote:

The “expensive” angle comes from those that like middle of the road products designed with major economies of scale in mind. Don’t like playdate? That’s fine. But saying this is expensive is bull. Invention on a small scale costs money and people have become too accustomed to hyper-capitalist low price shite tech with an apple or Samsung logo slapped on it. This is fucking cool.

I'm going to stand my ground on this one. It's $180 to play black and white WarioWare games. Agreed it's cool, agreed small scale tech costs money, but it's still expensive. Akin to a nice record player, the PlayDate is a lovely bit of kit... but it's expensive. For $10 more you can get a Switch Lite, for example.

I have the Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 on Switch. Or I could have gone out and got an Analog Pocket and the requisite adapter to play the same games. The end result is the same, but the latter has a certain something, like listening to your favourite record on vinyl versus via [steaming service of choice here]. But the Analog Pocket is still expensive, whatever way you cut it. The vinyl version of my favourite album may have had a small print run, sure... but it's still expensive.

Saying the PlayDate isn't expensive because it's a small company and an interesting new device is like saying that Maybach isn't expensive when you consider all the diamonds in the dashboard. Whatever the reason, it's still expensive.

If you can afford it and enjoy it, that's fine. I really want to see it succeed, because it is interesting. But when I think about what I could get for the same money, in my mind it's unarguably costly.

Blue Swirl wrote:

The “expensive” angle comes from those that like middle of the road products designed with major economies of scale in mind. Don’t like playdate? That’s fine. But saying this is expensive is bull. Invention on a small scale costs money and people have become too accustomed to hyper-capitalist low price shite tech with an apple or Samsung logo slapped on it. This is fucking cool.

I'm going to stand my ground on this one. It's $180 to play black and white WarioWare games. Agreed it's cool, agreed small scale tech costs money, but it's still expensive. Akin to a nice record player, the PlayDate is a lovely bit of kit... but it's expensive. For $10 more you can get a Switch Lite, for example. I have the Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 on Switch. Or I could have gone out and got an Analog Pocket and the requisite adapter to play the same games. The end result is the same, but the latter has a certain something, like listening to your favourite record on vinyl versus via [steaming service of choice here]. But the Analog Pocket is still expensive, whatever way you cut it. The vinyl version of my favourite album may have had a small print run, sure... but it's still expensive. Saying the PlayDate isn't expensive because it's a small company and an interesting new device is like saying that Maybach isn't expensive when you consider all the diamonds in the dashboard. Whatever the reason, it's still expensive. If you can afford it and enjoy it, that's fine. I really want to see it succeed, because it is interesting. But when I think about what I could get for the same money, in my mind it's unarguably costly.

It's not unarguably costly. It's a $95 dollar production cost unit (so the rest of the money has to cover paying devs, shipping, marketing, profits, etc.) with a really nice finish and feature set, plus a bunch of games. So yes, for $10 more you can get a Switch Lite which has much better economies of scale, and comes with zero games. And, the Switch Lite has, in many ways, cheaper components. It doesn't use solid state memory for example, while the Playdate does. That costs money. 

Nintendo also get to double dip on profit, even though the base switch will cost more than the playdate, because they'll take a cut of revenues from sales. PlayDate has an open development platform and lets you sideload games, so you don't need to use their subscription service to get games.

Beyond that, it sits right in the middle of handheld pricing if we look at all consoles from GameBoy up to Vita. And that's not even considering that inflation is a thing and yet consumers haven't really accepted many price rises on games or hardware. It's not expensive, people are just addicted to cheap electronics. 

EDIT:

Removed a sentence at the end as I think it reads antagonistically when it's not intended as such. Genuinely interesting to see how people see price and value.

Hvae to say Panic as a company generally create quality products. Many moons ago they used to be a software company supporting Mac web devs and when I used to be a full time dev, I mainly used Coda and Transmit, both excellent products, but both paid for and a bit more than the competition too.

Just took a look at their website and they are still doing Transmit, great app that.

Is the playdate expensive though? Like I know that £200 is not chump change but what should the cost of relatively small scale brand new electronics product be?

As cint says They’ve made 24 games baked into that price so even if they’re giving everyone a pound per console it’s then only 180 for the bits of hardware which is all custom designed?

I just paid 120 ish for an Amiga 500 clone thing. So next to that it doesn’t feel inherently crazy.

It costs £76 to build the console according to Panic. But obviously that doesn't include the price of the bundled games.

Apparently some Playdates might arrive with dead batteries but they aren't dead dead, they just need a charge because they had a long travel time.

EvilRedEye wrote:

Playdates might arrive with dead batteries

Young Bjork was stunning

Apparently if you didn't pre-order a case with your Playdate and you now regret not ordering a case you can contact customer services and they'll help you out.

Teenage Mutant Engineering. Heroes in a crank shell, handle power!

I sort of wished they could have managed a better roll out to be honest. It seems like ages ago when the hype was up and now it’s a shit limbo far from the excitement days but also an unknowable amount of time to wait.

Screen is defo sexy. Really pops in the daylight. I'll have to wait and see if the no backlight thing feels like an issue.
Look forward to downloading a few extra games onto it.

And this raytracing thing some crazy person did:
https://twitter.com/llemarie/status/1520988985010491392?s=21&t=2Z2ydL7zUTlZgF0FrLim0w

Was having a look at the dev stuff recently, wish I could get one sooner than next year.

Very nice. I want one