[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.