Playdate Software Development Kit is now available for free to all | Hacker News Reader

Playdate Software Development Kit is now available for free to all

play.date

211 pointsjonah-archive89 comments

A lot of people here seem to be surprised that people would spend $200 on a niche gaming console when you could instead get an emulation machine or "real" handheld.

To add a bit of perspective, from someone who sells classic video games for a living: this console's main point isn't to be affordable or play high-end games. Its target market probably already owns an OLED Switch, a Vita, PSP, every DS model and 2 or 3 Game Boys (one of which is modded with an IPS display).

It's designed to be interesting. That's it. Doesn't need to have a killer app or broad library.

Any utility it offers comes from the fact that it's something to add a bit of spice and fun to an already broad games collection, and possibly the clout that comes from showing other people that you own one.

From that perspective, I think these guys have absolutely hit it out of the park. Not surprised by the success of this at all.

> Any utility it offers comes from the fact that it's something to add a bit of spice and fun to an already broad games collection, and possibly the clout that comes from showing other people that you own one.

Is that niche large enough for a sustainable success?

(not arguing, genuinely interested to hear your opinion)

For a mega-corporation the size of Microsoft or Sony, not at all.

For a small business staffed entirely by enthusiasts, absolutely.

There always have been, and always will be, successful businesses based in niche novelties.

That doesn't jibe with how profiteers view how capitalism should work.

Their view transparently leads to the end of the world. It can, should, and must be discarded as deranged.

What are you referring to? It sounds to me more like a socialist version of capitalism.

Honestly not sure what you mean by this. At least outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, there are plenty of profit-minded, capitalistic people who aren't trying to become a trillion dollar megacorp.

>A lot of people here seem to be surprised that people would spend $200 on a niche gaming console when you could instead get an emulation machine or "real" handheld.

A good explanation from John Siracusa:

>To a certain class of person, this makes no sense.

>This product is a celebration. It's all custom hardware, every single part, and they wrote their own operating system. Why would you do that? Why is this not running Linux or a Raspberry Pi or something sensible? Because the company is ridiculous, the people are insane, and this is an amazing thing that should not exist but does.

https://overcast.fm/+R7DX2ydgY/1:25:44

Link to longer discussion: https://overcast.fm/+R7DX2ydgY/1:17:40

I've said it so many times before even I'm getting bored of saying it, but it seems to me to be something closer to fantasy consoles than normal gaming handhelds. As you say its not meant to compete with the Switch, its much closer to something like pico-8 (obviously thats not hardware, you know what I mean) in my opinion.

> To add a bit of perspective, from someone who sells classic video games for a living: this console's main point isn't to be affordable or play high-end games. Its target market probably already owns an OLED Switch, a Vita, PSP, every DS model and 2 or 3 Game Boys (one of which is modded with an IPS display).

I feel personally attacked.

For those mentioning the price, it's worth noting that you receive games for free on the device. That's part of the package

From their homepage:

> 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. > >That's 24 free games, in lots of genres. Some are short. Some are long. Will you love them all? Probably not. Will you have a great time trying them? Absolutely.

Still expensive, but also only just. Especially given the hardware crank part which I definitely would want to be high quality seeing how much it's going to be used.

The only question I have though is what type of games will people be making for this before the novelty wears off? It's going to need games which are made from "crank first" perspectives if this device is to actually last.

So! To kick off a conversation here if it's not too late. What games would you make if you were developing for this device?

I'd probably make a couple

1. A skateboard game where the crank is the balance

2. A game where you control a tank/space ship gunner position and the crank is used for both reloading and targeting.

I can't think of any game right now where there would be a story where the crank mechanic is central to it. Curious if anyone else has ideas here.

Human power plant + palm gym.

Obviously, fishing.

I think a kind of fencing game would be pretty cool, in which you turn the crank forwards to lunge forwards (maybe you only actually "strike" after a full turn, and the rest of it is just moving forwards) and jump backwards when you crank backwards. Would be especially cool if it were from the first person perspective (of course something very basic in terms of style, like vector tanks or something)

Really regretting cancelling my preorder now, I wanna make that :(

Oh that is very very cool. I think something with the kind of quirky rotoscoped animation like they had in the original prince of Persia games would fit so well on this.

Now that I think about it. A remake of the original prince of Persia would be such a joyful experience with the mechanic you thought of.

Yeh that rotoscoped style could actually work pretty well, might be a bit difficult to do with the 1-bit screen, but I think its certainly doable.

I think in general the most interesting games will be the ones that don't actually use the crank as a crank if you know what I mean. Like analog sticks are used for movement, they arent used to operate an in game equivalent of an analog stick.

RC car racing using the crank as a steering wheel (like a pistol-style RC control)

Riffing off your skateboard, other balance games like tightrope walking

Something where you're a hamster in a hamster ball

A guitar hero/just dance style rhythm game

I’ll riff on that (pun intended). The api allows the ability to see the position and change of position of the crank. Moving the crank to the correct position and doing. A rhythm game could very well show moves like rotate forwards twice. Half rotate back. Etc. And you have to perform moves within a certain range of that. That could be a fun one indeed :D

My personal idea is Advance Wars and all the guns in my universe are crank operated, and if you crank well enough when firing, you get a little bonus to your damage.

I had a couple of ideas. I don't think I'm going to actually build them, so anyone's welcome to the ideas.

- A horror game where a crank-operated flashlight is your only source of light. The crank on the PlayDate is how you recharge the flashlight.

- A stealth game where you play as a safe cracker and use the crank as a mock safe dial.

- A "the floor is lava" style platformer where you swing across monkey bars, using the crank to adjust your momentum. I.e. spin it up to start doing 360's on the bar you're currently on and launch yourself farther, or spin it backwards to slow down for shorter jumps.

This reminds me of the Pokitto, created by my friend Jonne. It's a programmable pocket game console, too.

https://www.pokitto.com

With a clever and efficient BOM, he was able to get a color display and the price down to about 50 bucks. He's working on a networked version now.

Your friend may have the technical part down, but the design needs a lot of work. A gaming machine should be fun.

This does look fun

It's fun.

Is there a hardware PICO-8?

Yes! There's this: https://shop.pocketchip.co/

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=34009

For anyone asking "why", Panic has written a blogpost about it and talked about it on their podcast: https://panic.com/blog/the-story-of-playdate/

It wasn't always their goal to enter the console market, it started as an idea for a very special anniversary project and evolved into the playdate. It might be a pricy, boutique, indie gaming handheld for us but from what I've read more of a "fun" project and life experience for panic.

This is typically lovely and well-designed Teenage Engineering hardware. I'm sure the buttons will feel great.

I'm wary of buying it though, it might end up sitting on a shelf looking pretty like my Pocket Operator.

My Pocket Operator definitely spends a lot of time on the shelf, not quite sure it's looking pretty without a case though...

Hope it ends up better than the OP-Z buttons though. I haven't had a lot of trust in TE build quality since that, but it looks like the case at least is sturdier

Initial thoughts:

1. From the video on the site, device looks simple & portable.

2. The crank on the side makes you think it can play only 2D games.

3. $199 (device+cover) feels little expensive.

4. Display seems black white

5. Wonder why this was not done as an accessory device for smartphones instead of a separate device

It's a fidget toy for people with lots of money rather than an actual gaming device. It all makes sense once you see it with that perspective.

It looks like a high quality build with a sharp oled screen and novel controls. A stick on crank for a phone would be silly and feel cheap.

It's not OLED. It's more like one of those LCD watch displays but massively technologically advanced forward.

Ah so it isn't. Still looks quite good in the images. High enough resolution to feel premium.

I've held one in my hand and damn that screen is clear as hell (but reflective) I think it sits somewhere between IPS and OLED for me, and being reflective it's easier to look at.

Panic is into gaming, and distributed Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game.

I look at it as an homage to the Game 'n' Watch. And that was still a game. Does it really need to do everything in the world?

The display is black and white, yes.

It's only expensive when compared to products churned out by massive megacorporation with economies of scale on their side. This device was made from scratch by a very small company.

The Arduboy is $60. I don't doubt this thing is more capable that the Arduboy, the hardware is probably nicer, but they're both tiny fidget toys for small games- and one is 4x pricier than the other. So it's not like cheaper indie handhelds can't exist.

The Arduboy is more powerful for sure.

I've made a game for the Playdate using the Pulp tool release last month. My summation is the device will be a neat toy for hobby gamedevs.

In specs it certainly isn't.

Apparently the Arduboy is based on the ATmega328. Is writing code in C/C++/Rust fast enough to write full-motion graphically/logically complex (if graphical complexity is even possible on a small display) games on the system, or do you need to implement large chunks in assembly code?

Re 2. I saw a tweet from a developer who ported Doom to the playdate. He made it so you could turn the crank to fire the chain gun.

It's a love letter to past times, with little extras. It's made in partnership with Teenage Engineering, which created all sorts of little (and bigger) devices like this, mostly for audio. https://teenage.engineering/

I'd pull the trigger for $199, but with tax and shipping it is $231. I want it but it is just over my price threshold.

re: 5: The device is for enthusiast, traditional gamers that buy dedicated hardware. This customer doesn't really play games on their smartphones.

The crank reminds me of my housemates old bass master fishing game. Which I oddly enjoyed.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224827699040

I imagine this will be worlds better.

The target is nostalgic tech old rich people tired of their iPhones.

Not sure what's the intersection is with people who still play games.

TBH I think game devs will pick it up. There are a lot looking for new restrictions/features that will force them to make fun in different ways.

Announcement tweet: https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1498427655175159822

while the device is novel and I wish the devs the best, I just cant wrap my head around who would actually want to use this device?

The Gimmick seems like it would wear off rather fast for anyone interested in gaming, the Seasonal model of games released seems to put all the risk on the consumer to hope they make more. the games dont actually look all the interesting, and as a fun toy for non-gamers it seems to expensive.

to me it looks like a product a lot of teenage engineering fans and hipsters will want to buy but after a week sits on a shelf unused.

My take is the same. I suspect we will see them strategically placed in the background of Cool People Who Make Youtube Videos, but that's about it.

I'm kind of mad about the seasonal model. It means that only the "first wave" of owners will get to experience the excitement of the new games with other owners. For everyone else, it's old news.

The season begins once you first power up the device. Everybody is on their own release schedule.

I've said as much in previous comments, but I certainly want to use this device!

It's got an open SDK, binaries are freely loadable and runnable. The Lua API at least is quite simple, and plenty enough to get a backend dev like me up and running with my own games, on real gaming hardware! That's almost never been practical, in my experience anyways. Playdate promises to dramatically lower the barrier to portable game development; I'm looking forward both to playing with it, and helping show my son that he too can make awesome things with computers.

The crank is seemingly a gimmick but a good one, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it is (or isn't) incorporated in games. It seems to have inspired a good bit of creativity, at least in the Season One games they've demoed so far.

> will want to buy but after a week sits on a shelf unused.

Just like my nintendo switch!

The Nintendo switch is a much more compelling device that I can actually see a use case for, but yeah not for me mine also sits unused for more than 2 years now.

I've been keeping an eye to this little novelty console for a while now, and the additional stereo dock could be a really nifty desk fidget.

While I won't be an early adopter of this console, I hope they it's not going to be a necessary limited edition so I'll have an easy time getting the combo at a later date.

Way overpriced compared to other alternatives like the Odroid Go Advance which costs less than 1/3, runs Linux, can emulate plenty of other gaming platforms, and by having a gpio connector exposed to the outside and thoroughly documented hardware seems a really interesting hacking platform. Also, it employs both a RockChip RK3326 and a ESP32 module.

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go-advance-black-edit...

https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid_go_advance/start

That's not what I want tho. I want a neat unique device with certain restrictions to curb my creativity. I'm the target audience.

Different products appeal to different people. For me, the Playdate is far more interesting. You get the device and 24 games and get to support the development of something novel. All that for less than $200? To me, that seems like a very reasonable price.

Plus, the Playdate has great industrial design. The Odroid is downright ugly in comparison.

They're not remotely the same product though. The person buying this /does not want/ those features, so those are actually downsides. They actively don't want emulation machines, because those machines never ship with any games they haven't played before (or could play other ways).

Also I held one in my hand early on in the pandemic (they did a small show where I was) and the thing /feels/ worth the asking price. It's really solid, and the SHARP "memory LCD" tech they're using is one of the clearest monochrome screens I've seen. OLED is more capable, but this is easier on the eyes and battery.

However, with price increase+shipping+tax, I can't afford one. I hope they become popular enough to either drop in price or do a mk2.

I would like GPIO though that'd be nice.

This a dope, can’t wait to get my hands on my playdate!

Can you disable the "seasons" feature? I don't love the idea of constant stream of random software getting loaded on there

This is a good question for the playdate discord where a few Panic employees hang out to answer questions. From their previous related answers I believe the playdate is extremely flexible.

I haven’t heard of this device and thought It felt like something from teenage engineering… awesome that they’re involved.

A full blown sdk for a device like this seems like a blast. Side projects/hobby coding can get boring/stale sometimes but this seems like a blast

how is it only 8 hours active battery?

The battery is about as big as a stick of gum. So 8 hours makes sense to me.

I love the device and the SDK.

But as a game dev, what I utterly dislike is the business model.

I don't understand it and I feel I won't have any control.

I think they botched it.

>I don't understand it

>I think they botched it.

How can you assert 'B' if 'A' is true?

I don't understand the business model.

But I think what they botched is the launch of their device.

If the business model is not attractive for a game developer, I don't see much value in the device, it is merely a nice toy.

I thought it was going to be the source code to Mac Playmate for a second.

"Play date", well that was a risky click on a work computer.

> Most games will use Playdate’s Lua API

Oh my sweet summer child. Reminds me of the Android documentation that said something along "Most apps shouldn't use the NDK".

Do most apps use the NDK?

AFAIK virtually all Android games use NDK because game engines like Unity are not written in Java.

Instead of unity there is a first-party lua sdk, though

Almost all the most popular apps (Facebook, WhatsApp, Google Chrome, Google Maps ..) do.

And of course, nearly all games do.

How many people are going to develop for a niche hobby platform with such closed-source restrictions (including anti-reverse-engineering): https://play.date/dev/sdk-license

The "closed-source restrictions" are on the SDK itself, not applications written using it. At risk of being a bit flip, there's a pretty long history of people developing applications that run against proprietary SDKs. The "niche hobby platform" might prove to be more of an issue, but I don't think anyone developing for -- or for that matter, buying -- the Playdate is doing so with the expectation that it's going to be the next Nintendo Switch.

I'll own one, and I'm a game developer, so, at least one.

What part of the license do you feel I should be upset about?

Does anyone care about this after the Analogue Pocket and the Steam Deck have launched (I get my Steam Deck next week).

I get they're different devices, but I feel the Playdate had a bunch of hype, and then took way too long to ship, and has lost that initial interest.

I still think it's neat. As neat as Analogue Pocket, maybe not Steam Deck.

I generally like small single-purpose electronics and find them to be fun ways to get some joy out of digital devices. I think I could do that with both the Pocket and Deck, but I like the idea of the minimalism of the Play, so I'm probably going to eventually own all three :P

I don't think it's comparable to the Steam Deck, in the sense that the Steam Deck has always been about playing existing games and the PlayDate has always been about completely new games for that hardware. They serve different use cases.

I don't have anything to say about the Analogue Pocket; your comment is the first I heard of it.

I always felt the Playdate was more competing with things like the Arduboy, Gamebuino, or even the Pico8. A new platform for brand new games that is perhaps retro inspired but not actually retro.

I don't really think many people are debating between the Playdate and the Analogue Pocket or Steam Deck.

Assuming Panic manages to ship their first run, tens of thousands of people who've already ordered are going to have Playdates in their hands sooner or later, and they will set the tone for its reception. It's not like the hardware is going to become obsolete; its appeal was always its simplicity and the "curated indie experience" on offer. Neither the Analogue Pocket nor the Steam Deck is really comparable in terms of capability or value proposition.

The current price of GBA micros on eBay makes me think this will do just fine.

There are probably a dozen great handheld devices that will play GBA, SNES, NES, Genesis, PSX, and more for around $100.

https://www.amazon.com/Retroid-Android-Handheld-Multiple-Emu...

https://www.amazon.com/RG351V-Handheld-Console-Portable-Two-...

the steam deck, from all early reviews, sounds like endless settings fiddling to play high visual load games.

the simplicity of the device with play.date is its selling feature (to me).

there’s a lot of diversity in interests so I don’t get the quick to claim DOA on this.

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