Arduino Gaming: Not So Retro Any More

beckman101 writes "Two years ago the Gameduino brought retro-style gaming to the Arduino. This week its successor launched on Kickstarter, still fully open-source but with a video that shows it running some contemporary-looking demos. Plus, it has a touch screen and a pretty decent 3-axis accelerometer. Farewell to the retro?"

I just do not understand the market for this

[wbr1]

I understand the market for the Pi, arduino, et al. But this is pre-built, and presumably the dev environment is nothing portable outside its own very limited eco system. Sure you have all the IO of the arduino for toying with novel ways of having game input, but that is about it.

Now lets compare it with android. Available cheap, yes. Available with large screens, yes, available in variety's that have pretty durn snappy CPU/GPU combos, yes, large market base, yes, IO (USB, bluetooth, and even NFC, yes, robust dev tools and libraries, yes.

Please don't misunderstand me, I like the concept, but fail to see the utility. If I want to play games, my Optimus G plays better ones than this (which still looks retro! Frogger? Space invaders? Simple platformers?), and I can emulate to play whatever retro stuff I want. If I want to develop games, I have all the tools necessary as well.

Can anyone give me some really feasible use cases for this?