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I didn't know what playdate was. From the website:

- Handheld game console with a focus on indie games

- Black and white display

- Analog crank on the side

- Comes with 24 free games

Sounds neat!

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Comes with 2 games, followed by 2 more games every week to the total of 24 for the first "season". And the season starts when you first use the console, not on a fixed date.
That's frustrating? I can't see that as a pro especially a year from now when all the games are known and fully detailed on the web and you're stuck waiting to get to the one you want play.
Well... play along and don't peek at the spoilers? It's really not that hard. And I'm sure they will have a way of bypassing the wait.
I’m really glad this is going to be a big success. It’s a group of people with skills doing it for the love of the game(s)
I find it great that apparently sales in the tenths of thousands can be seen as a success. Apparently not everything has to sell millions upon millions.

I really like the concept of this thing and as a life long gamer with a soft spot for controllers, devices and new concepts this should be right up my alley. Nonetheless, with international shipping and taxes not even in the initial price, the value proposition for me personally is too steep. But as I said: I wish them all the success.

Plus it looks like there is a C/Lua SDK coming out soon which is cool.
Reminds me a bit the "501 games in 1" handheld consoles :/

"Playdate stated that they were interested in including games by underrepresented developers and game makers, at least one game by a woman, as well as games by queer, trans and non-binary developers."

Uugh, just focus on the games...

I preordered one!

I've ben very excited about the Playdate since it was announced. The company behind it is one of my favorite software companies, Panic, which makes a bunch of well-known Mac apps that I use fairly often and generally find well designed; they recently got into game publishing too and published Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game. The hardware was designed by one of my favorite small hardware companies, Teenage Engineering, which makes all kinds of weird and interesting audio stuff.

I have no idea how these two companies got together to make something like this, and it's definitely a bit of a departure for both of them, but I hope it works out well! I think modern tech could do with a bit more occasional weird totally-out-of-left-field small cool projects like this one.