Veteran Software Developer Panic Unveils Playdate Handheld Game Player (daringfireball.net) 91
Veteran software developer firm Panic, which has made its name through high-end Mac software as well as titles such as Firewatch, is expanding its work in games and moving in a very unexpected direction. This week, Panic unveiled Playdate, a tiny, yellow Game Boy-like device with a black-and-white screen, a few chunky buttons, and... a hand crank for controlling quirky games. From a report: Playdate is adorable and exciting and fun and technically impressive. They're making their own hardware (in conjunction with Swedish device makers Teenage Engineering). They wrote their own OS (there's no Linux). It has a high resolution 400 x 240 black and white display with no backlighting. It has a crank. It's going to cost only $149 -- $149! -- and that includes a "season" of 12 games from an amazing roster of beloved video game creators, delivered every Monday for 12 weeks. The idea of a new upstart, a company the size of Panic -- with only software experience at that -- jumping into the hardware game with a brand new platform harkens back to the '80s and '90s. But even back then, a company like, say, General Magic or Palm, was VC-backed and aspired to be a titan. To be the next Atari or Commodore or Apple.
In today's world all the new computing devices and platforms come from huge companies. Apple of course. All the well-known Android handset makers building off an OS provided by Google. Sony. Nintendo. Panic is almost cheating in a way because they're tiny. The Playdate platform isn't competing with the state of the art. It's not a retro platform, per se, but while it has an obviously nostalgic charm it is competing only on its own terms. Its only goal is to be fun. And aspects of Playdate are utterly modern: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, apps and software updates delivered over-the-air. They're taking advantage of an aspect of today's world that is brand new -- the Asian supply chain, the cheapness of Asian manufacturing, the cheapness of CPU and GPU cycles that allows things like Raspberry Pi to cost just $35.
In today's world all the new computing devices and platforms come from huge companies. Apple of course. All the well-known Android handset makers building off an OS provided by Google. Sony. Nintendo. Panic is almost cheating in a way because they're tiny. The Playdate platform isn't competing with the state of the art. It's not a retro platform, per se, but while it has an obviously nostalgic charm it is competing only on its own terms. Its only goal is to be fun. And aspects of Playdate are utterly modern: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, apps and software updates delivered over-the-air. They're taking advantage of an aspect of today's world that is brand new -- the Asian supply chain, the cheapness of Asian manufacturing, the cheapness of CPU and GPU cycles that allows things like Raspberry Pi to cost just $35.
Nice Advertisement (Score:1)
A cheap chinese manufactured handheld retro game system. I can't wait for more chinese plastic dogshit that halfway works, sort of - sometimes.
Are they partnered with Soulja Boy?
High resolution? (Score:3, Informative)
In which year was 400x240 considered high resolution?
There are plenty of cheap chinese game consoles with 1024x768 color screen, costing $30-$40.
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In which year was 400x240 considered high resolution?
Nintendo 3DS release, 2011.
There are plenty of cheap chinese game consoles with 1024x768 color screen, costing $30-$40.
How many of these cheap Chinese consoles' manufactures have signed up several notable game developers? Absence of notable third-party devs is one of the factors that doomed the OUYA console.
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The 3DS main screen is 800x240, and in color. It is 400x240 for each eye, and this new handheld console isn't advertised as offering that kind of stereoscopic mode. It's also in mono. So, overall, this handheld compares poorly to 8-year-old hardware.
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Absence of notable third-party devs is one of the factors that doomed the OUYA console.
Ouya was doomed because it was shit. It overheated, the controller pairing scheme was poor and devices wandered around from one virtual controller port to another, it had a fancy scaler in the GPU that would scale to arbitrary resolutions for "free" (at least, it doesn't affect frame rates) but if you connected it to a display which didn't advertise 720p or 1080p early in the list, it would connect only at 640x480...
Incidentally, I seem to have been on some mailing list all along, since I just recently got
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1978. [wikipedia.org]
Apple ]['s 280x192 is High Resolution compared to the 40x48 Low Resolution.
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I can just play with my smartphone and have hardware which can easily compete with a Playstation 2 without any extra cost. What's the advantage of this thing? It has two buttons?
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Late 90's they had those, the pre-phone post-PDA gadgets. Your standard wannabe-OS crap; contacts, memos, calendar, image viewer, audio player. Whatever cheapshit alibaba board modules they could toss in, like FM radio or later on cameras.
And so they'd also throw in an emulator. Because why the fuck not. China don't give a fuck. Drag and drop .nes or .gb right in, and they'd play.
Had one at the time, obvious miniature-Game Gear form-factor. 800x480. Probably 128MB storage, but those old ROMs are tiny. A con
wait, how much will it cost, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's going to cost only $149 -- $149!"
This is the most transparent slashvertisement I have ever seen.
It is also not a selling point. I can buy an Android tablet with a real screen for less money any day of the week. It can run literally hundreds of games with no additional expenditure. It's also good for other things.
Fifty dollars would be a good price for such a grossly limited device. That would be more in line with devices like raspi, as mentioned nonsensically in the summary.
Re:wait, how much will it cost, again? (Score:4, Funny)
It has a crank also???
So do I, but it doesn't raise my value to three times what it should be.
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It has a crank also???
So do I, but it doesn't raise my value to three times what it should be.
Well, speak for yourself, mine does (badum ching!)
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I bought one of those cheap Android tablets.. once. It was phoning home to China so frequently that I shut it down and put it back in its box -- forever.
Use some discretion. Look them up online first and find one that's reflashable with a clean ROM. I don't buy Android devices without unlockable bootloaders.
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If its cellular capable it still has a blackbox baseband and of course even with a custom OS we still cant fully trust systems. It may have something like Intel ME with its own OS.
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If its cellular capable it still has a blackbox baseband and of course even with a custom OS we still cant fully trust systems. It may have something like Intel ME with its own OS.
While all of that is true, all of that is also irrelevant. Who gives a shit if the radio module spies on you while you're playing games? And you can't trust the device no matter how much you spend on it, because the high-end and supposedly scrupulous devices have the same problems. If you don't trust the radio, cut the antennas. Or at least, if you're not using the radio, turn it off. Sure, they could lie to you about whether it's on or off, but you could be lied to about whether a SOC has a radio in it, to
Re: wait, how much will it cost, again? (Score:1)
But this one is from a long-time game developer known for creating high quality games, with a big following in the Mac and iOS world. This device wonâ(TM)t be the next GameBoy, but it will probably be really fun and, with the inclusion of at least 12 games with that price from some pretty high-profile game creators, it will probably be more than competitive with other ways to spend $150 over the course of a year.
Re: wait, how much will it cost, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
But this one is from a long-time game developer known for creating high quality games,
Their Wikipedia page shows them as having written one game, and having one more in development. They are known primarily for their FTP client.
This device wonÃ(TM)t be the next GameBoy, but it will probably be really fun and, with the inclusion of at least 12 games with that price from some pretty high-profile game creators, it will probably be more than competitive with other ways to spend $150 over the course of a year.
For $150 you can get a halfway decent phone AND a bluetooth android controller, and you can play real games instead of the low-end game-boy level stuff possible on this device. A cheap phone may not have a crank, but it does have wifi, a cell modem, and you can play more games on it than you would actually have time to play in your lifetime.
Do I think you could get $150 of enjoyment out of it? Sure, it's conceivable. But I think you'd get more out of spending it elsewhere, even if you're into retrogames.
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Can't argue with any of that, but who knows ... the strangest things can catch on.
Only a minority of items in this field really cost a logical amount.
Why games may lack Android controller support (Score:3)
For $150 you can get a halfway decent phone AND a bluetooth android controller
And a lot of games won't be compatible with a Bluetooth Android controller. If a game's developer believes that not enough Android phone owners also own a controller, this could discourage the developer from adding controller support (if it's already on Android) or even from porting a PC or console game to Android in the first place. I remember looking on the websites of these controllers, and none of them offered sales figures to entice developers to support their kit. Has this changed?
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a lot of games won't be compatible with a Bluetooth Android controller.
There are several tools for converting joystick input into touches and swipes. For most games, it's not a big problem.
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Provided the game is ported to Android in the first place. Lack of sales figures for controllers may discourage a developer from even attempting a port.
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Tepples, you fucking argumentative knob. We're comparing to a platform which will probably only get twelve official releases EVER and this is your response? Eat an entire dick.
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I've never heard of them.
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Why not an ODROID-GO? Already established, and much cheaper.
That looks great. First time I've seen it. That's a reasonable price for all that wrapped around an ESP32 (it would have been a bit much for its predecessor, but I think it's spot on for that device.)
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RasPi - $35
Power Supply - $10
LCD for RasPi - $45
raspi zero w $10 [adafruit.com]
2.8" 640x480 display for Pi Zero W $20 [ebay.com]
Samsung Evo Select 32GB $7.54 [amazon.com]
Li-Ion Charger/2A boost module $1.13 [ebay.com]
So that's around $40 for off-the-shelf stuff not counting the controller, battery, or case. It should be easy enough to come up with a $50 product. The engineering is trivial, it's just gluing stuff together.
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An Tablet/phone is a terrible portable gaming device unless all of the games you want to play only require touch controls. There is no substitute for tactile controls. This is device is still not a good value, of course.
Fifty dollars would be a good price for such a grossly limited device. That would be more in line with devices like raspi, as mentioned nonsensically in the summary.
You're going to spend at least another $50-100 to get a RP to be a decent handheld device. There are kits that are great, but after you factor in the screen, battery, case, custom controller boards, and manual labor, it adds up.
Really, the best alternative to this device is a Game Boy or ND
Re: Cool I guess? (Score:1)
It appears that it is intended to be a fun toy. That is all, apparently.
I'll by that ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... for $1.49. It's a great toy, but that's all it is.
If I had money to throw around like candy, which I don't, I might even pay $14.90 for it just for the "cool" factor.
But at $149, that's in "April Fools was almost 2 months ago" territory.
The next Ouya (Score:5, Insightful)
No. But thanks! (Score:3)
Listen - if you want to release a PC/phone version of those games in a bundle for say, $12 - I'll support you on that.
$150 for a shell around a DSP and mini-monochrome, headjack and some buttons... eh, I don't need that floating around in my closet in a few months. It looks nice - but I don't really want it even if it's an idealized result.
Ryan Fenton
Comment removed (Score:3)
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It also helped that the things were damn near indestructible. My OG Gameboy still works almost 30 years later.
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They also had the hottest title in handheld gaming at the time, with head-to-head play using a cheap cable. It was ground-breaking stuff.
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I wrote a whole comment here, but then it got eaten by the lameness filter, and I have no idea why. So I'm just writing this instead. I read it and re-read it, and I really, really have no idea.
Re: Bad form factor (Score:2)
Cranky crank (Score:2)
From how thin it is and given the kind of forces the cranking will generate, I bet most of the split open along the right side fairly quickly.
Who is this for? (Score:2, Interesting)
So you get an overpriced toy that only has a couple unannounced games, which are delivered as "seasons" which casts doubt on how long you get to keep them? A couple years ago I bought a retrogame handheld that ran every emulator from atari to ps1 for like $50. Lets you play several decades of games for multiple systems.
I guess mine doesn't have a crank though.
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I actually read the info on their site.
It's 12 games, released one a week. You keep them forever.
These are new games, built specifically for the platform.
Sorry, it won't play Centipede, Space Invaders, or PacMan.
There will be an API and IDE, perhaps someone will write a Pong for you.
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For comparison, just a couple years ago I think I paid $200 for a Motorola cell phone, REAL high resolution, actual color, a high res camera, etc.
For comparison, I just recently paid $150 for a Lenovorola X4. By modern standards it's slow, but by my standards it's a fucking rocket, since I was still using an E2 until I got this. It's got eight cores, 3GB/16GB plus a card slot, and a nearly-full-HD display.
For $150, I'd expect at least one fast ARM core, a quality GPU, and a durable case.
While I'm posting again on this subject, let me just say that a crank is dumb. A scrolling wheel would be a great thing to have, but a crank? WTF. WT actual F.
Sounds like a "fun project" for developers (Score:4, Insightful)
They are making only "a limited number" of these. I'd be surprised if it's over 1000.
It sounds like this started as a fun internal project and someone said "hey I know a guy with money to burn that would want one" and they realized there are probably a few hundred people out there with "money to burn" that "want one" so they are making it available.
Buying one of these at $149 is more like paying dues to join a social club or maybe paying an inflated price for concert swag to support a music group you like than it is buying a game machine.
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It sounds like this started as a fun internal project and someone said "hey I know a guy with money to burn that would want one" and they realized there are probably a few hundred people out there with "money to burn" that "want one" so they are making it available.
Yeah, and once they had committed to making so many units they realized that they couldn't actually find that many people who actually had money to burn and wanted one, so now there's a slashvertisement about it to prove what a dumb idea it was.
The only way it might make sense to do something like this would be to make a shell a Raspi Zero went into. That's something you might be able to sell for under fifty bucks. Then you could probably sell a jillion of them to the cult of raspi.
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"Veteran Software Developer Panic Unveils..." (Score:2)
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+1
Slashdot titles should stop this stupid habit of putting a capital letter on each work. Panic and Playdate are both normal words ... the title is impossible to understand without knowing Panic is a company and Playdate is the product.
slashdot has become skymall (Score:5, Funny)
Cabel Sasser let me in on this about two weeks ago, and I don’t think I’ve spent a waking hour since when I haven’t thought about Playdate at least once.
Suck a fuck.
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That was from Daring Fireball and the Slashdot post didn't credit them.
DF's John Gruber is a personal friend of the Panic staff, hence the take on Playdate.
Good to see TE onboard (Score:1)
Teenage Engineering has been putting out some of the most unique and coolest little synthesizers for a little while now (Pocket Operators). I'll definitely give it a look.
This looks as ridiculous as the Karaoke (Score:2)
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Or the Tamagotchi. But, then again, I also thought that the Segway was utterly idiotic - win some, lose some.
You were right. The segway is a cool toy for rich people, but it is probably the most overhyped invention of all time. Most Tamagotchi wound up in the back of drawers immediately, too. That there actually was a Tamagotchi craze doesn't change that.
So then (Score:3)
400 x 240 black and white display. Limited games. Dude, I can get a 2DS with four or five games for what you're asking for this. This is ludricrous.
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Firewatch (Score:5, Informative)
And the hipsters rejoiced! (Score:1)
It's interesting. (Score:3)
I don't understand the rock throwing here. Panic is trying something new, fun and whimsical.
Yes, it costs money. People have to make a living and they know it won't be a million seller.
Teenage Engineering has a great track record for making clever, well made hardware.
It won't be a piece of throw-away junk. Sure, they could just publish another bunch of
iPhone games, big deal. Instead, Panic seems to be trying to throw out a handful of new
ideas, with user delight being the focus. Why not? Is the world a better place with a fresh
attempt at creativity? Yes. It's just a toy. No need to panic.
There will be an API for Lua and C along with an IDE and emulator.
A not-Linux embedded OS built for speed and minimal power drain.
Sorry, there ain't no root. Outrage!!
Seems like a fun little device. Why do people bitch that it's not identical to the thousand
devices and commerce models we already have?
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I think there are plenty of interesting ways to do 'sponsored content' / slashvertisements. This article is the opposite of that, and hence, is annoying as fuck.
How to slashvertize properly and inoffensively?
The article should provide information that is useful or interesting to a technical reader. A description of how the manufacturing took place would
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Did you actually hit enter at the end of each line, or did you just C&P that from some other place you were paid to post it?
Nintendo Has Left a Gap in the Handheld Market (Score:1)