When we last saw the Playdate we got a list of games, an announcement that twice as many games would be in the first season that comes bundled with the handheld, the announcement of a stereo dock with a pen holder, a Poolsuite app, and a promise of pre-orders in July for the cranky yellow handheld. Tomorrow the promised pre-orders go live for $180 at 10AM Pacific, on the Playdate website. The proposed ship date is “late 2021” for the first group of about 20 thousand Playdates. Any ordered beyond that first allotment will ship later on in 2022. Shipping to the US will be a little under $14. More information on countries that can order the Playdate tomorrow are on this page. Panic says that the pre-orders will be paid up front, that the people ordering can cancel any time, and that orders are limited to two Playdates per-person.
Panic timed the pre-order announcement to coincide with an embargo for other journalists, so there are also impressions of a pre-release Playdate up on Ars Technica, The Verge, GameSpot, IGN, Wired, and Polygon.
I think the Playdate looks like a nifty video game toy, I’m very curious if the homebrew scene for it takes off.
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