I just wish someone released a clone. The "computer" is worth like 5$. I've enjoyed programming and porting my 3D game engine to 20$ ESP32 devkits among others, and am looking for more "crazy" platforms. But I don't even want to touch playdate due to its pricing stance, even though my office has an unused one in the store room.
Do you mean the SOC costs $5? The Playdate comes with a screen, buttons, battery, OS, and 24 (admittedly small-ish) pack-in games.
I haven't looked into how that all nets out, but when I think about how much a Raspberry Pi costs by itself vs the Pi + a case, screen, and peripherals... I don't know, I can see how you'd end up around $230.
Heck, even just a set of Switch 2 Joycons costs $100.
Your math is off ~10x. The devkits I've developed for are literally 20-30$, both in 3.5 inch screen format, or smartwatch format, with a case, touchscreen, buttons, battery, realtime OS, RTC, wifi, tons of GPIO's etc. Only hardware things playdate has on top is marginally higher build quality, the swivel (that most games don't use) 10-20MB more RAM. Their decision to have a greyscale screen also saves them money, instead of a common full color one like those 30$ devkits have.
So it is beyond obvious that Playdate's price does not even closely match their bill of materials.
Even if you went up in power to a full Linux machine with 1GB+ of ram, there are obvious examples of devices like that like the RG3588 class. I have one, and it works nicely as a linux box running any software one can get running on aarch64 linux. Mine is relatively fancy and with postage cost me ~100$, but you can get a more "basic" one that is still way beyond Playdate on a hardware level, for about 40$.
What playdate has is a walled garden. I don't like walled gardens. Especially this far from release.
You comparing to Nintendo's first-party joycon pricing, I'm not sure you understand how deep walled gardens can be.
Most games I've played do use it, actually, sometimes when I wish they hadn't. (I really like the crank in many games, but some games go out of their way to use it when they should have stuck to buttons.)
> Their decision to have a greyscale screen also saves them money, instead of a common full color one like those 30$ devkits have.
...but the PlayDate's screen doesn't look like a typical LCD. It looks much closer to e-ink. (E-ink is even better, but the Playdate is maybe ~60% of the way there.)
I did some very quick Googling and it looks like this type of screen, at the PlayDate's size and resolution, costs about $30[1]. If the SOC is indeed $5 we're now at $35 from just those two parts, before assembly or anything.
> You comparing to Nintendo's first-party joycon pricing, I'm not sure you understand how deep walled gardens can be.
But Nintendo also has economies of scale to work with that Panic does not. I've used third party Switch controllers, and they don't feel as nice—I'm paying for quality. (Admittedly I don't love how the PlayDate buttons feel either, they're fine, not Nintendo quality!)
I do agree that the Playdate is a game console, and when you buy a game console you're paying for the cohesive ecosystem. PC gaming is better in basically every way but requires more work. Not much work, to be clear, but some.
I'm not entirely satisfied with my Playdate btw, because I don't love the game library. But it's cute and I really like the software (not the games specifically), I'm a sucker for UIs that are polished to an extreme level.
maxlin · · focus · HN ↗
Wowfunhappy · · focus · HN ↗
I haven't looked into how that all nets out, but when I think about how much a Raspberry Pi costs by itself vs the Pi + a case, screen, and peripherals... I don't know, I can see how you'd end up around $230.
Heck, even just a set of Switch 2 Joycons costs $100.
maxlin · · focus · HN ↗
So it is beyond obvious that Playdate's price does not even closely match their bill of materials.
Even if you went up in power to a full Linux machine with 1GB+ of ram, there are obvious examples of devices like that like the RG3588 class. I have one, and it works nicely as a linux box running any software one can get running on aarch64 linux. Mine is relatively fancy and with postage cost me ~100$, but you can get a more "basic" one that is still way beyond Playdate on a hardware level, for about 40$.
What playdate has is a walled garden. I don't like walled gardens. Especially this far from release.
You comparing to Nintendo's first-party joycon pricing, I'm not sure you understand how deep walled gardens can be.
Wowfunhappy · · focus · HN ↗
Most games I've played do use it, actually, sometimes when I wish they hadn't. (I really like the crank in many games, but some games go out of their way to use it when they should have stuck to buttons.)
> Their decision to have a greyscale screen also saves them money, instead of a common full color one like those 30$ devkits have.
...but the PlayDate's screen doesn't look like a typical LCD. It looks much closer to e-ink. (E-ink is even better, but the Playdate is maybe ~60% of the way there.)
I did some very quick Googling and it looks like this type of screen, at the PlayDate's size and resolution, costs about $30[1]. If the SOC is indeed $5 we're now at $35 from just those two parts, before assembly or anything.
> You comparing to Nintendo's first-party joycon pricing, I'm not sure you understand how deep walled gardens can be.
But Nintendo also has economies of scale to work with that Panic does not. I've used third party Switch controllers, and they don't feel as nice—I'm paying for quality. (Admittedly I don't love how the PlayDate buttons feel either, they're fine, not Nintendo quality!)
I do agree that the Playdate is a game console, and when you buy a game console you're paying for the cohesive ecosystem. PC gaming is better in basically every way but requires more work. Not much work, to be clear, but some.
I'm not entirely satisfied with my Playdate btw, because I don't love the game library. But it's cute and I really like the software (not the games specifically), I'm a sucker for UIs that are polished to an extreme level.
1: <a href="https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sharp-microelectronics/LS027B7DH01A/5054067" rel="nofollow">https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sharp-microelectr...