Isn't that the hand cranked console that has been out for a while?
Does it charge Playdate's battery? Nope
Huh, it is, but it's not a generator, rather a fishing controller! Didn't know that!
You can also make your own Playdate games [...] with the Pulp game maker, all you need is a web browser.
Ew!
The rest of that paragraph:
You can also make your own Playdate games. Our SDK is free to download, no special hardware required. [...] Plus, sideloading games onto the Playdate is easy.
is fine and laudable, but that's "only" on par with existing open (PC, AOSP Android, all those portables from the GP32 to whatever Odroid Go Advance clone came out in the last 2 weeks) and functionally-open (our modded consoles) systems...
When combined with the following quote:
Since 1999, Panic makes Mac software
it's not clear how much of that is the better-than-ever but still
grossly uncompetitive cost of small scale manufacturing, and how much is unrealistic expectations of for-profit developers especially of those for Apple systems; rationally most of that is the former but how are we supposed to know?
And, worse, that means the smart consumer will necessarily scrutinize it harder - a microcontroller-class (M7) CPU isn't competitive on pure processing power* compared to whatever the current Odroid Go model is offering, the much lower current of said electronics and non-illuminated B&W screen means the unspecified 8 hour battery is of modest capacity, etc*...
* sure, arguably that's not the point of this system, but that means it could have been done without reinventing the wheel, now as an 83-sided tungsten and hydrofluorocarbon alloy!
Posted from my Digimon X Silver
