ATIB (a thing I bought): Anki Drive

snapster had a video to watch said Sun, Mar 16th 2014 at 11:01pm ET

I've been off for spring break with my boys (a Washington DC trip) and had a few "vacation recovery" days here at the end. I ventured into an Apple store and came across this 5 foot long box with race car art on it. I googled it and realized it was featured in that last Tim Cook WWDC video I never got around to watching:

Since I'd somehow managed to not hear about this thing yet, I had pretty low expectations. But, with a couple days left to spend with my 8 and 9 year old sons out of school, I figured even if it sucked it could be a rewarding experience.

I'm not planning on a full review here or anything but I'll summarize that this thing has blown me away - and not necessarily for just how cool the tech is, but for how actual fun this is to play socially with other people. (The AI is actually crazy-good when playing solo but I think it'll be more about the head-to-head fun.)

Has anyone else played this? I'm really interested in seeing how sustainably fun it remains.

http://anki.com

7 comments, 2 replies
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shawn said Mon, Mar 17th 2014 at 9:59am ET:

Have this on my wishlist but didn't purchase over Christmas because I'm not sure my 3-year-old would enjoy it that much. What did your boys think of it?

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- Pretty smooth with the wishlist linking there
  
  matthew said Mon, Mar 17th 2014 at 4:01pm ET
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joshaw said Mon, Mar 17th 2014 at 12:58pm ET:

Is this compatible with Android? ;-)

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snapster said Mon, Mar 17th 2014 at 6:10pm ET:

@shawn, my boys loved it. As is usual for them, they didn't give much thought to the technology. They immediately got hooked on the game mechanics of earning upgrades to their cars. It should go without saying (but doesn't quite) that the upgrades you earn are entirely gameplay based and not monetized.

I was hoping someone might come along that's had it for a few months and tell me they still love it. I'm at a point in filling a new game room that I need to buy a pool table and I have some thought that a platform for this track might be more enjoyable!

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snapster said Mon, Mar 17th 2014 at 6:13pm ET:

@joshaw, nope! I wonder if that exclusivity was monetized by Apple. My guess is by granting the keynote and shelf space in apple stores they got the exclusive.

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capguncowboy said Tue, Mar 18th 2014 at 2:58pm ET:

I hadn't heard of or seen this until now. It looks impressive to say the least. I'm interested to learn if this is going to be like all the Ping-Pong and Pool tables I see cluttering Craigslist because you "just lost interest in it after the first few weeks".

BTW, I have a Stiga ST4100 Ping Pong table for sale!

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- I had one of those, but gave it away. It's what we filmed the home page lab video on top of!
  
  dave said Tue, Mar 18th 2014 at 4:03pm ET
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HonorablMention said Wed, Mar 19th 2014 at 5:39pm ET:

@Snapster, I watched the WWDC live and loved the Anki Drive demo. During the presentation they actually had some technical issues, which took a few awkward minutes live on stage to figure out, but it ended well. I've heard they sold very well over the holidays.

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chrisk said Thu, Mar 20th 2014 at 2:27pm ET:

@HonorablMention, So I guess that means we won't get our hands on any for quite a while :)

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