[fn-mote]

Re: price point

HN readers who can write a console game before bedtime are not the target audience. A handheld device that Just Works and creates an authentic experience is worth a lot.

For a college class, a $200 textbook isn’t out of line (the ones people still buy…), which makes this a very reasonable investment in one’s education.

Are there other, cheaper routes? Of course. For an introduction? Fewer, and nobody wants to be told to use learn the principles using Scratch - even if that can actually work.

Making something real is inspiring, and this feels real.

[latexr]

That’s a very USA-centric view. 200$ for a textbook which will (often) only be used for a couple of chapters and was written by the professor shouldn’t be normal anywhere. The price of that book could pay for months (and in some cases years) of tuition in EU countries.

As someone from the EU who was always curious about the Playdate, I never got one because the price becomes even more absurd once you factor shipping and taxes. It easily goes to double or more. I wish Panic all the luck with the console, but I think we can agree that paying Switch 2 / PlayStation 5 prices for one is hard to justify.

[smith7018]

Duke University is, in fact, in North Carolina, USA.

[latexr]

There’s no discussion of price point in the article. There is in this thread, so one can only deduce that when the OP said “Re: price point” they are answering the thread, not the article.

And not everyone on HN is in Duke, or North Carolina, or the USA.

[999900000999]

Tuition at Duke is 70k per year.

Buying a game system is the least of your problems there

[latexr]

Again, that’s not the discussion. See my reply over two hours ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804719

Additionally, the page says:

> more than 50 Playdates have been provided to students

Provided. To me that doesn’t seem like the students are paying for them. From other comments in the thread of former Duke students using iPods, it seems Duke lends you the hardware.

Furthermore, “tuition is expensive so buying expensive hardware is the least of your problems” is not a good argument. There’s a reason people in the USA drown in student debt. Whatever you can save is good.

[shimman]

They aren't drowning in debt because of supplies, they're drowning in debt because both the federal + state governments have stopped investing in education since the GFC in 2008. That plus a bloated admin body that cares about itself more than its literal mission (providing education + research).

[999900000999]

> The price of that book could pay for months (and in some cases years) of tuition in EU countries.

What happens in magical places with free or heavily subsidized college has little to do with what an expensive private US university does.

If a German college decides 200$ is too much they can use Godot or a variety of free alternatives.

[sauercrowd]

> The price of that book could pay for months (and in some cases years) of tuition in EU countries.

To your later comment, the devices are provided. You dont need to buy them.

Also that's not actual price. the tuition fees are that, doesn't mean that's the price. It's just heavily subsizied by the government. Hard to find sources, but the actual price/student in Germany seems to be ~10k Euro/student/year.

Hard to find

[latexr]

> the devices are provided. You dont need to buy them.

I was talking about a textbook, not the devices. I think that was made pretty clear by my use of the word “textbook”.

> the tuition fees are that, doesn't mean that's the price.

Seeing as I’m talking about what people have to pay, that’s irrelevant. What even is your comment? You’re taking what I said and responding to entirely different things. That’s not how we have a productive, good faith conversation.

> Hard to find sources, but the actual price/student in Germany seems to be ~10k Euro/student/year.

There are more countries in the EU besides Germany. In some, you don’t pay at all.

Furthermore, each college has different costs, there’s not just a fixed cost for student for everything. The costs per student for philosophy are not the comparable to the costs per student for veterinary medicine.

[sauercrowd]

You were responding to a comment about the price point being not that expensive, claiming that "200 usd for a college text book is very US centric", so I assumed you were arguing against that it's "worth the money".

So what are you arguing for? I genuinely cannot tell.

[tapoxi]

A Playdate is $229. A Switch 2 is $499 and a PS5 is $599

[latexr]

Like I said, I’m factoring in the price when you include shipping and taxes to Europe. If I wanted to buy a Playdate, it’d cost me close to the price of those consoles here.

[nacs]

It's not just the price of the console itself as mentioned in the article. Things like the Playstation and Xbox require a *very* expensive SDK.

Playdate's SDK is free.

[jubilanti]

A $200 textbook should absolutely be out of line

[bigfatkitten]

Professors making students buy the textbook they wrote for $200 is especially out of line.

In any other industry they call this corruption, but in academia it’s apparently ok.

[analog31]

What are the statistics on this? There are about 500k professors in the US, and they make up about 1/3 of college teachers. Also, most academics would object to this situation, so it's not apparently OK. There's a growing movement towards open-sourcing textbooks or replacing them with other kinds of online materials.

Don't get me wrong, I think that college education is due for reform.

There are examples of finding better ways to do it. My son's textbook costs were very low. The regional state university that he attended had some kind of thing where you rented your textbooks and turned them back in, often with a nominal or zero fee.

[htek]

One professor at my poorly subsidized state uni who had a book he required for class was $180 or so. He had enough (spiral bound Xeroxed) copies in the library for everyone to borrow for the semester. Or you could buy a shiny new one from the bookstore or online at full fare. Another gave the classes copies of the chapters.

[gnopgnip]

For an advanced course that is how the economics works out. They are expensive to produce and have limited demand, and typically only for a few years until they are replaced.

[barrkel]

Yes, but this is intentional, and that's what's out of line. The main content stays the same but exercises and case studies are rotated out to force an upgrade.

The business strategy class I took in college in Ireland used the same book for two or three years, even though the book was reshuffled every year, just to enable some spreading of the financial burden on students.

[aesthesia]

At least in some fields, advanced courses are the most likely to have lower cost textbooks. Real analysis textbooks are usually cheaper than calculus textbooks. It's the introductory courses that tend to have $200 behemoths attached to online homework platforms optimized for ease of grading rather than student learning.

[fragmede]

Anna has an archive for students who can't afford books.

[Jach]

I love Anna but it's also a poor school that doesn't have its own library that has at least a few copies of every textbook used by classes + inter-library loans. Can be a nice way to make friends by sharing a physical book to study and do exercises from in a shared workspace.

[fragmede]

I wouldn't have passed college of it weren't for sharing textbooks at the science library and making friends to study with!

[wat10000]

In this era of abundance, it's ridiculous for students to be sharing textbooks.

[Wololooo]

As an educator I always make a point to give the resources to the students and or give avenues to it that are not paywalled.

Knowledge is the only resource that only becomes greater the more is shared because people share back what they learned. Mind you this only works if people are paying it forward. But often the educator gets more from teaching than the student does.

[oulipo2]

The article mentions you can use the free PC/Mac simulator which doesn't require a device

[Cthulhu_]

There are plenty of free or cheaper alternatives, although platforms like pico-8 are (intentionally) hard to work with, especially as a first introduction to building games and / or coding.

[onemoresoop]

Is pico-8 hard to work with?

[3836293648]

No, but it has a lot of very intentional limitations

[JKCalhoun]

ArduBoy ($99) [1] comes to mind. But your point is taken.

Also Playdate claims there are educational discounts, so I suspect students aren't paying $199 (or is it a little over $200?). (EDIT: another comment suggested $195 is the student discount—ouch!)

[1] https://www.arduboy.com

[sbcgamer]

> A handheld device that Just Works and creates an authentic experience is worth a lot.

yeah, it's worth around $64.79 current price

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x_PmVHiQNHyw5t05peED...

...

It's not the format, there are cheaper, more open and more easily shared formats. It's the Developer Experience of the Playdate.