Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavon | Hacker News Reader

The Spike system seems like an odd side-step to me. There are some minor improvements, but not really enough to justify breaking compatibility and making people repurchase everything from scratch.

In contrast, Mindstorms replaced the old LEGO/Logo system (which I was fortunate to use in high school), and was a big step forward in a number of ways most noticeably that you didn't have to be tethered to the computer.

View on HN

Just to clarify, Mindstorms has had many iterations. I believe what you're referring to is Mindstorms 1.0 (RCX). It's had three successors in the past 20 years or so - NXT, EV3, and most recently, RIS.

The most recent iteration is based on SPIKE Prime. It's the same hub, but with slightly different firmware. The motors are and sensors are the same but in different colors.

All Mindstorms iterations (including the most recent) are untethered. As is SPIKE Prime.

Essentially this announcement is that they are discontinuing the consumer-facing branding, but continuing with the education product, SPIKE Prime. Both products are actually identical, minus a few firmware differences. The number of motors and sensors included in the box also differed.

I love Legos and by extension the company that makes them, and I still believe what you are saying, that everyone will have to buy new stuff, is exactly the reason the LEGO company is making this choice. They don't make a penny (unless they are somehow involved in a secondary market which probably has much lower margins and higher costs) unless you buy something new, and migrating to a new ecosystem makes so much sense if that's the goal.

> unless they are somehow involved in a secondary market

LEGO owns BrickLink, as of a few years ago.

Did you know that today's LEGO bricks are compatible with bricks manufactured in 1975?

There is no "migrating" here. LEGO correctly noted that Mindstorms was not very popular with the consumer market, and too complicated for the education market, so Prime is a vastly simpler product that's more accessible from education.

They are, but unlike in 1975, LEGO now makes it very difficult for people to actually buy just bricks. They won't sell plain packs of bricks to shops unless they buy large numbers of the themed sets.

I great up in the 1980s loving lego, and you couldn't buy just bricks then.

OTOH now you can get https://www.amazon.com.au/LEGO-Classic-10717-Bricks-Piece/dp... very easily (and there are smaller sets that cost a lot less too)

In the USA, you could definitely buy plain bricks in the 1970s. Probably the early to mid 80s, too, but I can’t be certain.

But unlike 1975, anyone who wants can buy plain packs online.

I used to buy Technix sets (sp?) and spend days playing with gear and pulley and wheel and motor systems. I don't think a single time in all my childhood did I ever sit down with a Lego set and build some themed toy that they suggested on the box.

All I really want is bricks, plates, shafts, couplers, gears, pulleys, motors, sensors, and assorted things. I'll come up with the projects myself. They don't seem to want people like me, since I have not been able to buy that kind of kit since the 80s.

Try some old Meccano.

Lego Technics motors, battery packs, remote controls, etc. from a few years ago are incompatible with the current ones, because they decided they wanted to raise the prices across the board and tie everything to smart phone apps.

Didn't Lego recently buy BrickLink? So they do own the secondary market, in a fairly real sense.

The latest Mindstorms is literally just Spike Prime with slightly different firmware.

And no colors :-(

> not really enough to justify breaking compatibility and making people repurchase everything from scratch

That’s LEGO’s game plan though X)

I don't know if thats true. Lego as a corporation has been fairly low on the fuckery index.

LEGO kits used to be composed of fully interchangeable parts. While that is still true of the core build, there are now unique parts in every kit. This is driven by sales.

Because people like them. And the unique parts are compatible with other kits.

Nearly all of the parts are designed around a small set of common interfaces. The main change is that have moderately increased the number of interfaces vs. a few decades ago and there are more small decorative parts (and thus higher overall part counts) in most large current sets.

Designing models that are comparable to the first-party models is a more difficult challenge for kids than it used to be, but there is also a much larger pool of extremely skilled builders than there used to be (both adults and children). But there’s nothing stopping anyone from using the current pieces in older-style projects, and the older pieces couldn’t be used in quite as large a variety of models as the current ones.

EV3 was largely compatible with NXT, and while NXT wasn't directly compatible with RIS they sold separate adapter modules. 51515 was a huge regression compared to the rest of the series.

The general LEGO system has also had decades of compatibility at this point...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com