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>Power for battery life—a fair trade-off? I’m not so sure. A GameBoy from 1989 is highly likely to still function. If you do not like the battery life of new

>Power for battery life—a fair trade-off? I’m not so sure. A GameBoy from 1989 is highly likely to still function. If you do not like the battery life of new products, continue to use the old ones. There is no tradeoff.

anonzzzies 1y ago
We can write modern products like this. It is a lot fun and it feels really good afterwards.
- pixl97 1y ago
  Will people buy them? In the 80s you had to get long battery life because you were generally throwing the batteries away and shoving in new ones. Now with rechargeables you just plug in the cord and you can both play and recharge at the same time. It's not a big expensive hassle. Do customers want more features/graphics or more battery life?
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    Probably depends on the customers and the products. I'm not into gaming handhelds, but for my other battery-powered electronics, battery life is probably the most important characteristic. Charging things is a real hassle, and the less I have to do it, the better. Particularly when so many of these things don't have user-replaceable batteries. But I know there are others who prioritize other aspects over battery life.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    It’s all about diminishing returns. I’d argue that we’re deep into that territory with graphics and have been for at least a decade now. Yes newer games look better, but the different isn’t radical like it is when comparing ~2005 games to their ~2015 counterparts, and outside of high settings junkies most people would be perfectly happy with 2015-2020 graphics for the foreseeable future. Battery life on the other hand is nowhere near the point of diminishing returns for many devices. If Apple released an iPhone that got a week of real world battery life for example, it’d be an instant hit. I’d personally love for gaming handhelds to have that kind of just so they never need to be plugged in while used and I rarely have to think about recharging.
  - anonzzzies 1y ago
    Charging stuff is very annoying if you are not just always home; I am on the go mostly and you'd be surprised how few places allow you to charge stuff. Also, there is a lot of improvement possible on all optimisation, but most people are; if it works somewhat, ship it. I can only hope now for a future where I can tell an AI 'here is a working app, optimise the crap out of it, thanks'.
asdff 1y ago
If its been used its pretty clapped out at this point. The glue on my gameboy lcd panel failed which required frequent regluing whenever that old dab of superglue would also eventually fail. I bet if I took it out of the drawer right now it would be loose again and need another dust off and glue job. The buttons also go. My gameboy color is sadly basically unplayable because the buttons aren't very responsive anymore. I'm sure that is coming for my ds as well. My switch joycons are already shot. None of my original game cube controllers really work anymore and the system itself has stopped reading disks (thankfully new oem controllers are still built for that for the japan competitive smash market at least).

anonzzzies 1y ago

We can write modern products like this. It is a lot fun and it feels really good afterwards.

pixl97 1y ago
Will people buy them? In the 80s you had to get long battery life because you were generally throwing the batteries away and shoving in new ones. Now with rechargeables you just plug in the cord and you can both play and recharge at the same time. It's not a big expensive hassle. Do customers want more features/graphics or more battery life?
- JohnFen 1y ago
  Probably depends on the customers and the products. I'm not into gaming handhelds, but for my other battery-powered electronics, battery life is probably the most important characteristic. Charging things is a real hassle, and the less I have to do it, the better. Particularly when so many of these things don't have user-replaceable batteries. But I know there are others who prioritize other aspects over battery life.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  It’s all about diminishing returns. I’d argue that we’re deep into that territory with graphics and have been for at least a decade now. Yes newer games look better, but the different isn’t radical like it is when comparing ~2005 games to their ~2015 counterparts, and outside of high settings junkies most people would be perfectly happy with 2015-2020 graphics for the foreseeable future. Battery life on the other hand is nowhere near the point of diminishing returns for many devices. If Apple released an iPhone that got a week of real world battery life for example, it’d be an instant hit. I’d personally love for gaming handhelds to have that kind of just so they never need to be plugged in while used and I rarely have to think about recharging.
- anonzzzies 1y ago
  Charging stuff is very annoying if you are not just always home; I am on the go mostly and you'd be surprised how few places allow you to charge stuff. Also, there is a lot of improvement possible on all optimisation, but most people are; if it works somewhat, ship it. I can only hope now for a future where I can tell an AI 'here is a working app, optimise the crap out of it, thanks'.

asdff 1y ago

If its been used its pretty clapped out at this point. The glue on my gameboy lcd panel failed which required frequent regluing whenever that old dab of superglue would also eventually fail. I bet if I took it out of the drawer right now it would be loose again and need another dust off and glue job. The buttons also go. My gameboy color is sadly basically unplayable because the buttons aren't very responsive anymore. I'm sure that is coming for my ds as well. My switch joycons are already shot. None of my original game cube controllers really work anymore and the system itself has stopped reading disks (thankfully new oem controllers are still built for that for the japan competitive smash market at least).