I'm still trying to understand at what scale Playdate moves from a hobby to a viable business. Panic sold 20k units in 20 minutes, which is impressive, but probably not yet enough to pay for the years of development cost accrued.
I don't think they went into this as a profit-making venture. Obviously they don't want to lose money on it, but it was supposed to be something much simpler and a celebration of 20 years in business, and they wanted it to be a piece of hardware because they'd never done that before.
In the linked podcast episode, they talk about it being a clock, but they wanted something more dynamic, like a Game&Watch system that sent a new game each week, but then they realized no one plays those simple games for more than 30 minutes tops, and it eventually evolved into a full-blown portable game system.
I hope this thing is popular and profitable enough that it gets a life of its own, so that it remains in production for years to come with regular new games. Because it sounds awesome, and I want one.
Yes, all the stuff I've seen from Panic about this sounds like "we did this because it's cool" not "we did this to make money". And I guess if you own a successful software company you have enough money to make something cool like this as your hobby. But it's being sold like it's a gaming platform and I'm wondering how long it will last as a platform if it doesn't pay the bills.
