32
votes
The Playdate handheld console is now in stock and available in twenty-two additional countries
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- Title
- You can finally buy a Playdate without waiting for months
- Authors
- Andrew Webster
- Published
- Feb 13 2024
- Word count
- 570 words
I make a living making games for Playdate, which is a dream scenario. Great to hear that it's more available for people.
How did you end up with such a unique job?
It's a long story, but I had a fruitful career and ended up with some extra time and a development Playdate on my hands just as lockdown happened. So I decided to go for it, as I figured the stars wouldn't align like that again. I'm completely independent, no funding to date.
If you don't mind me asking, is it your primary income? I didn't think that there were enough people with them to make that much money.
It is my primary income.
My needs and lifestyle are modest, and I make the games alone, quickly, with minimal costs, and I release a game every couple of months. It's a balance I've worked hard to achieve.
I'm also thankful that my games have won awards and accolades. My game YOYOZO featured in the Ars Technica "Best Games of 2023" list.
https://tildes.net/~games/1cbz/yoyozo_or_how_i_made_a_playdate_game_in_39kb
There are also some Reddit threads/comments of people making good money and it not being their main gig.
This is very cool and I'm going to check out all of your stuff
That seems wild to me, but congrats! I wouldn't have imagined such a niche console had enough capital to support that many people.
Thanks, see my other comments for details!
I'm just getting into game dev right now with Godot, how easy is it to get into playdate development?
The SDK is well-established and stable, well documented, has a good range of examples, and development can be rapid thanks to the Simulator. There's a friendly community and lots of open source code and additional frameworks. So, I don't think you'd want for anything.
That said I've never used Gofot, Unity, Unreal, Game Maker etc. I've always created games from a blank file with only a text editor. So I can't comment on the exactly, but the experience is likely to be quite different to how you've currently been doing it.
That's interesting, thank you for your input I'll have to check that out. Currently building a game in Godot at the moment and would love to see what I can do with a new platform like playdate in the future.
Really would love one, as I have an affinity for handhelds, but these are just too expensive.
I think it's totally worth saving up for.
Perhaps, but I just don't see the value.
It's very neat that it's constantly updated with new stuff to play, but I already have a dozen handhelds that can emulate up to PS1, all which cost less and there are so many weird and interesting games across the various consoles that I've never played and so many I've never even heard of that I just can't see the value proposition at $200. Even $75 would feel like too much, but much closer to what I'd be willing to pay as $50 would be a proper impulse purchase.
I get that it probably costs way more to manufacture them, so it's priced accordingly, but for $200 I can get a handheld that'll emulate up to Gamecube and Dreamcast, all of which is a known quantity, versus what I'm getting here.
I mean the hardware alone isn't $200. You're paying for 24 games that have been vetted by Panic and played by most owners.
This is fair and true, but again, it's competing with a device I can buy for $50-$75 that has access to nearly 4000 games if I just limited myself to the Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance libraries. It expands exponentially when you consider every other console, whether handheld or living room, released from 1980 to roughly 2006. Not to mention, Pico-8, which also continually has new games coming out that are similar to what the Playdate has.
I don't deny that the Playdate is very interesting and I would love to own one. I just can't justify it when it costs 4x more than an RG35xx and has a relatively limited catalogue of games. Not to mention, if support for it ceases, I'm stuck with whatever games I already have on the device itself.
Again, I want to reiterate that it's very cool and I've looked at one more than once, but the competition is very stiff and $200 is very much not impulse money for me.
I don't think Playdate is competing with those devices at all. But Playdate games are competing with every other game that has ever been made. I'll try to explain why I say that.
I have a Powkiddy RGB30, a Nintendo New 3DS, and far too many other handhelds and consoles going back 30 years. You're pitting all these devices against each other, but I don't I put them all in one basket. That's because I always pick the software, the games, regardless of hardware or platform. In fact, I'm very cold or even ambivalent about hardware in general. I have little attachment to hardware, because I'm all about software. You won't find me writing a love letter to the PS2, but I will write one about Katamari Damacy the game I bought a PS2 to play.
So if you want to play Playdate games there's only one choice: buy a Playdate. If you want to play a game from the rich history of the past 40 years, you have almost unlimited choice how you can go about that. But you're choosing games, and the hardware is simply an enabler or conduit.
I'd argue that there are at least a handful of exclusive games that make Playdate a worthy purchase - Award and Best of Year accolade winning games - but only you can decide if you want to play those games. If you'd rather play Kuru Kuru Kururin, bitGenerations Orbital, Pang DS, MaBoShi, Flicky (five of what I'd consider the greatest of all time), I wouldn't dream of trying to stop you because at the end of the day you'll be playing great games and experiencing the best our hobby has to offer. And that's what it's all about: the games.
ps: if support for Playdate ceases, you will not be stuck with what you already have. It's an open device, with no barriers or costs to development, and no attachment to online servers, so games would continue to be made for it.
I was going to join the other commenter but rather than argue, I'm more intrigued by your oddly specific list of five of the greatest games of all times. I had never heard of any of these prior, though they do seem interesting. Would you tell me more about your thoughts on them?
(There's only good natured discussion here, and some natural disagreement of course, but no arguing - of the heated kind).
Anyway, I just picked those 5 because that's how I felt that day. Today it would be a different 5. But, I must be somewhat predictable because 4 of those 5 are covered on my blog: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/tag/review/
The only one missing there is Pang DS (aka Magical Michael) which I should really write a longer piece about. My short thoughts are here: https://backloggd.com/games/pang-magical-michael/
I 100% understand what you're getting at, but I still absolutely disagree. Sure, the Playdate does have unique and interesting games you can only get on the Playdate, but both my time and my funds are of very limited quantity, so I have to weigh the decision: Am I really going to get $200 worth of fun out of this little device? Is that $200 going to compare favorably to the options I already have?
The Playdate undoubtedly has something I haven't experienced before, having a new control style as it does, but is that new experience going to really be worth the money it costs to buy in? Can I have 95% of the fun with something else I already have where I don't need to spend money to get that or at least, spend a fraction of the money?
I've been gaming now for more than 35-years, I've seen and played a lot of stuff and I'm of an age now where I realize there's a lot in the past that I missed. Experiences that I can have for free or cheap due to the age of the thing and I'm bound to have an interesting enough experience with that, that $200 is a hard sell. Portability isn't much of a factor either, considering I've never played something like Ghost Trick on my DSi, which is similarly portable and again, a brand new experience for me all the same.
I don't doubt that people are having a great time with the thing and that there are interesting experiences coming out for it, but interesting experiences are cheap and fulfilling these days. $200 can buy many different things for me right now and games, much as I love them, are pretty low on the list, given I already have so many I already haven't played and I'm yet uncovering more that cost considerably less.
Disagreeing means ruling out the possibility of a scenario where a single game on a new platform can justify a hardware purchase.
That would mean new hardware has never been purchased to play a particular game, which is the opposite of my experience over the years: (SNES=Pilotwings, PS1=Wipeout, DC=MSR, GC=Super Monkey Ball, PS2=Karmari, DS=Polarium, etc). Again, it's all about the games for me, the hardware is just a bonus item I pick up along the way. There are absolutely such "system sellers" on Playdate, or on any platform.
If it was purely a money thing one could could buy the device, play the games, then sell the device to recoup what was spent. It would cost nothing but time. But it seems the core of the issue is being able to justify spending money on something when there's a memory card full of enough free roms to play until the end of time. It's possible to have "95% of the fun", or even 200% of the fun, there is no limit to how much fun can be had. It will just be different fun if the choice of experience is different. I don't think it's fair to look at things as either/or when it can, quite reasonably, be both.
ps: the mention of new control styles brings back memories of the glory days of DS and Wii "new ways to play", where pretty much every game was trying something new. What a time to have been alive. Sure, I could have had "some fun" playing Mega Drive or SNES games during that time, but I'm really happy that I didn't.
Some people have disposable income and a desire for retro quirkness. That's not something people buy out of a purely cost benefit calculation (money/playtime ). It also looks cool. It has a crank, and it cost two thirds of a Nintendo Switch. This may be a videogame console, but it's priced as a piece of art. As art, it's actually pretty cheap. And it really does look awesome.
All those official mini consoles were not worth it either. But they're super cute and look great on a shelf.
I just finished season one this week and loaded up on a number of the free games. I'm in the opposite corner of the Steam Deck in that it's often collecting dust and being able to pick up and put down for 10 minutes at a time is better for me than having to download and parse out time for a structured game. It's like mobile in that way, but all the fun and discovery of console homebrew.
I have never gotten so much use out of a mobile gaming device before. It’s a combination of the device itself being incredibly tiny so it’s easy to take anywhere, and the huge variety of games available. I use it frequently at home, on my breaks at work, when I’m on the train or a passenger in a car, when I’m waiting for my car to be repaired, or to pick up my spouse from the doctor or whatever. It get more play than even my 3DS did back in the day
I have a ton of fun with my Playdate. Highly recommended. And it's easy to develop for!
It's so thin; is it not really uncomfortable to hold it? I can already feel my hands cramping...
I don't have any trouble with that, no. I keep both index fingers and both middle fingers under the device, supporting it across the whole back, and my thumbs on the buttons. It's at least as good as any classic game controller.
If you have access to a 3D printer there are grips you can print from Ledbetter Games, developer of Art&
That's a great idea. Unfortunately I don't have access to a 3D printer. I was considering buying a Playdate for $200, but once I saw that, with the case and having to actually pay for shipping, the final cost was going to be $250, I don't think I'm going to get one.
Unfortunately it is now completely obsolete. /s
I really should dig mine out. I haven't really touched mine since before they brought out the Catalog. It never played right with my charger for some reason; if it ran out of battery completely and I put it on the charger it would get stuck in some kind of diagnostic mode and it was annoying to reset it. Then I got a steam deck and it fulfills almost all of my gaming wants and needs.
Though only Playdate can play Playdate-exclusive games.
Including my game YOYOZO that featured in the Ars Technica "Best Games of 2023" list.
YOYOZO is fun, thanks for making it!
I also really liked Bloom (from another team), and Lucas Pope is working on Mars After Midnight which will hopefully release soon. Another game in development is Diora, which also looks really cool.
Bennet Foddy also has a game on there, Zipper.
Zipper is one of my favourites! I'm hyped for Diora and I think there's a lot of expectation for Mars After Midnight. Gonna be a good year for Playdate.
I'm guessing the crank is right-handed only?
I know some crank games let you flip the console upside down for a lefty mode
Yes, there's an OS-level option for it that developers can leverage.
It’s been on my radar since around 2022, it seems like an amazing and charming handheld, maybe I’ll buy one over the Summer. $200+ is a bit much for me currently but it seems worth it for setting some money aside for the future.
Clicking on the link, I saw this was made by Panic. I then went to Panic's site to see that Prompt 3 is out for iPad and macOS. I have Prompt 2 for iPad and like it and I thought to myself, "huh, new version, I suppose I should probably upgrade." They want $99 for Prompt 3 (or $20 a year). No discounted upgrade path. I guess I'm done upgrading Prompt.
That explains why Prompt 2 has been so buggy as of late.
Ah well. At least Prompt 2 still works.