The playdate

2021-08-05

I have pre-ordered this really interesting handheld game console that is quite unique in a number of ways as far as handheld gaming devices go. The two big unusual hardware features that stand out are the non-backlit transflective black and white display and the crank lever. Another unique thing is the game delivery. The $179 price might seem a little steep for the specs of the hardware but that price starts to feel more reasonable when you consider that included with the purchase price is what they are calling a season of games. Two new games will be made available each month for one year and a total of 24 games. Additional seasons of games are planned in the coming years. The games planned for season 1 look pretty fun too from the brief previews they have released. Their SDK for making games supports Lua and C and there will also be a beginner friendly graphical game making interface that runs in a browser. Oh, they also have this weird Bluetooth speaker dock planned that the device magnetically attaches to that is super cute. Beyond that it has a modest 180MHz Cortex M7 CPU, 16MB RAM, 4GB of flash storage, Wifi/Bluetooth, accelerometer, built-in speaker, mic and headphone jack.

After being on the fence for a day or so I decided it was too cool and interesting to pass up. I still have some questions about how open and hackable it will be and I'm a little disappointed they didn't include any external storage interface. With an sd card slot it could have made a really nice low power sunlight viewable audio player. I suppose it still could do that but with only 4GB of storage built-in you wouldn't be able to fit much music on it. Still, I'm pretty excited to check this thing out and play some of the games. That crank on the side could facilitate some really unique gameplay experiences. It's a solid collection of specs that I could see some really fun homebrew creations come out of if a good community forms around it.

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