408
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
408 points (98.8% liked)
Technology
87598 readers
4071 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So close, yet so far
I guess it's nice to pretend and not even make a point. You have said nothing.
He said “you don’t know what you’re talking about because the Playdate isn’t any of those things you said and it’s sure as shit not an emulator” but you might be too dense for that because meaning seems to have bounced right off. Don’t worry, the rest of us understood just fine.
No.
He said "so close, yet so far" which is saying nothing.
Whatever it plays, it's still just an stm32, an esp and a screen. It's still just 35$ in parts being sold for more than double the price a phone that can play Wii games would cost. It's a gimmick. You are falling for a gimmick.
I guess if it's assembled with slave labor then they could probably sell it for the cost of parts. I'm not saying it isn't overpriced, but suggesting it should only cost as much as the parts is kinda ignorant.
I highly doubt anything other than final assembly with the case is being done. PCB aren't hand soldered anymore, a machine does all the work. If it was built in the US, it wouldn't be dealing with tarrifs in any case so clearly, there's as much slave labor involved as every other product.
Before it becomes an issue, yes I think tariffs are dumb. Its just silly to assume these guys are the only ones doing ethical gameboy gimmick toys and that's why it's overpriced.
A quick google actually tells me it's manufactured in Malaysia so they don't even do final assembly. PCB is most likely China.
Great. Now add internal shipping, warehouse costs, R&D, including the ongoing development of a custom firmware, game engine including a editor, server maintenane and more for a device that, after all, is still selling in quite small numbers.
If that still isn't enough, consider that each device comes with custom-made 24 games from various game devs.