Can you help me understand the value prop of what you're offering? The positioning makes me think this is a just shadcn component product + Next on Vercel, neither of which require paying for an additional platform
The core value prop is 2 things:
1. Not having to deal with authentication, team permissions, organization management and a good UI/UX. We do this by embedding the tools you create into our parent web app.
2. An AI offering (as shown in the first video) that allows you to quickly scaffold out your tool with just a prompt when developing locally. It knows about our components and auto applies code changes, so the feedback loop is faster.
2 is a very doubtful differentiator, any decent ai engineer can do what they showed. they’ll have to deepen their ai stack a lot more to not be clonable there
@swyx I personally think it's not just about AI engineering, because step function improvements in foundational models means that everyone's AI stack is in trouble, not just ours.
For us, an underrated part of what is valuable is the components and their API design. Being able to have a <DataTable /> with just the right props for the right use cases, so that a foundational model doesn't go and build it from scratch is useful.
The reason is mainly because now you save money on tokens, and save time because faster inference (since abstractions are already in place).
tl;dr give AI the right tools > trying to compete at foundational layer. (We are building those tools.)
Congrats on the launch! A couple small things: When you toggle between light and dark mode the hero section on the homepage ends up selected. Also the padding on the home icon at the top is a little funky. It looks out of line with the rest the titles
More broadly - interesting idea! I worry about there not being much utility in the space that lives between full-fledged documents and quick messages on chat. Including a demo, walkthrough or screenshots on the site would help make that gap more digestable for me.
Thanks for the feedback on the website. We'll definitely take a look and add screenshots and demos to that as well. There's a demo in the HN post if you're interested.
I don't have a writeup but the main highlights have been
1. Loki Entertainment [0] (1988-2001), a third-party porting company that licensed games and released them for Linux
2. Linux Game Publishing [1] (2001-2009), basically continued what Loki was doing
3. id Software used to release their games for Linux and open source the engines [2]
4. Others (mostly Indies) also had Linux ports, but it was still rare: Frictional (Penumbra series, Amnesia), 2D Boy (World of Goo), ... and Wolfire Games who created:
5. Humble Indie Bundle [3] (2010-) incentivized many popular Indie games to be ported to Linux - initially all Bundles where 100% cross-platform between Windows, Linux and OS X.
6. Steam for Linux [4] (beta 2012, 2013-) - with the lure of Steam Machines many more developers jumped onto Linux ports, including some larger Publishers as well as porting companies: Aspyr, Feral Interactive, Virtual Programming (eON)
7. GOG.com Linux support [5] (2014-)
8. DXVK, Proton (2018-) making it easier to play Windows games
There was also Kickstarter where for a while most big ones had Linux support promised in some form. Also Unity adding Linux exports has made it possible for tons of games to be ported (although not without issues). I probably forgot some things, but at least that should be a lot you can read up on.
Looks super interesting - would love if the homepage had some kind of demo/screenshot built in. I'd rather not have to click any buttons to see what I'm getting myself into here
I like the landing page a lot (with original header)! For me that quickly added image seems to be out of place and doesn't actually explain the usage of the app. In my opinion the original header was better at expressing a constant feel of the page.
This is just an incredibly misguided take, particularly from someone who seems to be deep in the games industry.
The developers already legally hold all of the power in these situations - they can literally pick and choose when they want to enforce copyright [1]. How does making creators even more disadvantaged work out for the communities in the long term?
This is a great point - but you have to remember the money is what dictates games that go "mainstream". Companies like Activision, Blizzard, and EA are going to push out something that has low-risk, high reward (Call of Duty, Assassins Creed etc.) rather than push the medium of games forward.
They'll leave the interesting "games as an art form" type idea to indie devs, and once some idea or concept has broken mainstream, they'll snatch it and tag it to a well known IP (see Battle Royale + Call of Duty) and call it a day
I've been using Game Pass for roughly 18 months. Really like it so far, though I've gotten it for "free" through MS Rewards. I'd probably have a different opinion if I actually paid for it monthly.
The thing that is missing are the huge AAA games, but I honestly can't see most of those coming to Game Pass. They may come but like 1-2 years after initial release.
Minus like the Forza and Halo series, most of the MS owned studios developing games are fairly shorter in length. Don't take that the wrong way though, even though they are shorter some are real gems. Just don't expect to play every game on there for 20+ hours or anything.
Definitely a winning move. Netflix beat Blockbuster, TiVO, AND cable's on-demand video services with a worse content library and harder UI (initially - those boxes sucked) - because it was cheap, easy, and felt free. GamePass recreates that, at least for casual gamers.
Plus, GamePass locks you in like consoles once did. That stickiness in recurring revenue is hugely valuable in itself, and because it has a network effect (this was basically the reason for the ongoing console wars).
Combine that with cloud gaming, and the lock-in and UX just gets better.
Their main barrier is good content. Thus the splashy buy.
To expect a company to produce the quality/type of games that they made 20+ years ago is a bit unfair, don't you think? I'd venture to guess that the folks behind those games left the studio along time ago anyway.
