alt Hacker NewsPlaydate feels like a Louis Vuitton bag in that you buy it not because you need a bag but because you want a fancy luxury good that feels good for you to own. I’m not criticizing it, though. I celebrate that we have options. When I got my kid a Scratch + JS game dev handheld I found a dozen options with varying pros and cons.
But the petty, small part of me has this itch where I’m unnecessarily concerned that Playdate might actually believe it’s not just a Louis Vuitton bag and that it actually is a sensibly practical purchase. I think I’m sensitive to the desire for things to be honest about what they are.
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I see the Playdate as further from a Louis Vuitton bag and closer to hockey gear you might buy to partake in an amateur adult league.
It's not practical in the terms that you can use it to plow fields and feed your family, but it's also not entirely a status symbol. The money spent allows you to participate in an activity you enjoy that may or may not have a social aspect.
From a purely utilitarian point of view, the price of a Louis Vuitton bag is unjustifiable.
But from a social signalling perspective the price makes sense, it’s a way to show that you have lots of money.
Anyone who would need to “save up” to buy such an overpriced item (even if it’s “pretty”) is merely trying to fake being in the “I’m very rich club” which if they aren’t really, they could probably do with spending their money a bit more wisely.
For a Playdate, the cost is high for what it does, probably because it doesn’t have economy of scale compared to more popular hardware, but it’s still at a price point that’s affordable to an average professional, compared to a Louis Vuitton bag which is not.
There's a big difference in level of Veblen between a silly $200 gadget and a $3k handbag.
The same could be said for an Apple laptop.
I think the makers of the Playdate have always been pretty clear about what the console is about. And I'm not sure you could ever consider a video game console a "practical" purchase. You never need to play video games.
Video games are always shaped by the hardware they are played on, but there used to be way, way more variance. Hardware limitations forced devs to make choices that resulted in interesting mechanics, interesting ways to tell stories. Which means there are some odd and interesting games on Playdate that probably wouldn't have existed otherwise. That's why I got one anyhow.
...Also it was $170 and came with 20 games when I got it (granted, the price has gone up since). I don't get how that can be considered a luxury good. I get that could be a good amount of money to some people, but compared to other video games, I don't think it is.