There are exclusive games made by some famous people in the industry, and it features a new gaming device: a crank.
Nowhere does Playdate indicate it is anything but single player or that it currently has any games, but im sure 'some famous people' doing stuff is cool too.
Yes! I could buy many assortments of things for the cost of a Playdate but I want a Playdate. It sounds interesting to me in a way that 2 retroids or 200 packs of gum doesn't.
> some famous people' doing stuff is cool too.
Yes! I find it interesting and a project I'm interested in supporting even if it ends up being disappointing.
> The Season.
> Here's the truly unique bit. Playdate isn't just an empty system. Once you set up your Playdate, you'll start to receive two brand new games... every week. For 12 weeks.
Having novelty doesn't make it garbage, and yes, paying for 24 new games to get made is generally more expensive than pirating Dreamcast ROMs.
FYI: NONE of the games listed on their season page have a release date.
That's a release date, even if a slightly amorphous one keyed off of a specific event that we don't know the exact timing for yet.
Modern consoles are so powerful that an indie dev is rarely limited in what they can do, which might sound like a good thing, but there's a reason Orson Welles once said, "the enemy of art is the absence of limits".
Think of it like a film maker spending more money to use old film/lenses. Yeah, using the phone in their pocket and windows movie maker would be cheaper and higher quality, but that's not the point.
I am also very curious what MP experiences will be possible with the WiFi/BT on a retro handheld.