Time for a Playdate
A small subset of the Internet jumped with joy and glee when it heard about Playdate — a handheld gaming device, developed by Portland, Oregon-based independent software company Panic, in conjunction with a Swedish engineering company, Teenage Engineering. The device will cost $149 and will ship in early 2020. It is a departure from modern high-resolution attention traps.
It is a throwback to a time when games were valued in terms of fun and joy, and not in things like the time spent in a game, monthly active users, and attention share. Mac-head John Gruber couldn’t contain his enthusiasm, while Anil Dash (of Glitch) was beside himself and wrote a wonderful essay about independent software makers.