[haswell]

I'd consider myself deeply steeped in the HN echo chamber. Even though I'm a software guy, I've spent my share of time tinkering with electronics, implementing DIY home automation projects with Raspberry Pis and ESP8266 chips, etc.

But I wouldn't have recognized either of those without going to look up more information, skim the specs or possibly manuals to understand whether or not I care about the change.

The communication from Panic is simple, straight forward, and gives me a bit of context without making me go spend more time on research. They did exactly what they needed to do to help me feel more informed and less frustrated by the change.

On your implication that this is an unnecessary overpriced product, then I suspect this product was not built for you. Sure, someone could purchase those parts and have their own thing up and running in no time. But no one would care.

The PlayDate builds a defacto community all participating in the same product and the hype surrounding it, and this is what people buy into.

I also take issue with this only targeting the HN crowd. There has been plenty of hype in other circles, and the Playdate team will be shipping a no-code project so they're clearly trying to make this accessible to enterprising kids (young and old).

[jakelazaroff]

People seem to forget that you can’t evaluate games purely on tech specs. Sure, the graphics will be way better on my Switch. But if I want to play those cute Keita Takahashi or Lucas Pope games, I need to buy a Playdate.

[fizwidget]

Agreed, and interestingly it’s a similar story for the Switch itself! Relative to a PS5 it’s very underpowered, yet it’s still hugely popular in large part because of the awesome Nintendo games.