Key informationSystem Playdate
Manufacturer Panic Inc
Launch Q1 2021
System cost £149.99 TBC (Includes console and twelve games in the Season One game service)
Game cost Season cost pricing TBC
BackgroundPanic Inc wrote:We love video games.
We love the places they take us and the feelings they give us. We’ve grown up with them. It sounds silly, but they really mean a lot to us.
Playdate is our celebration of the video game.
We reached out to some incredible game designers, some you've heard of, others you haven’t.
We showed them Playdate and asked, “Want to make a game for it?”. Then we lost our minds when they said “Yeah!”
So Playdate isn’t just the hardware.
It’s twelve brand new video games, one each week.
What are these games? Here’s the thing: we’d like to keep them a secret until they appear on your Playdate. We want to surprise you.
Some are short, some long, some are experimental, some traditional. All are fun.
When your Playdate lights up with a brand new game delivery, we hope you can’t wait to unwrap your gift.
And there’s so much more to come. Playdate is alive with possibilities and surprises, future games and new ways to make them. We’ll have even more to talk about at launch.
Video>Engadget: Playdate hands-on (20 August 2019)
> Panic Inc: Make games for Playdate (22 September 2020)
Useful links> Wikipedia - Playdate -
click> Panic Inc - Official Playdate site -
click> Playdate Community Wiki -
click jawa's verdictPlaydate looks super-unique! Bold yellow... a sharp black-and-white-screen... and that crank! The system feels fresh and I love the idea of lots of interesting and quirky games arriving. It's a small device that slips into your pocket or your bag; ideal for carrying around with you and enabling sharp bursts of fun and hijinx.
A lot will depend on the games themselves, of course. It sounds like Pani Inc have lined up a number of developers and the really great aspect is that any coder can write games and upload them to the system. This has the potential for accessing lots of different ideas and it could really expand the life of the system.
The season subscription service is an interesting approach; it seems that you wil make an (as yet unknown) payment and then recieive up to twelve games each season to play as and when you want.
This product would seem to be for folk who like the idea of playing funny, unique games on the go. It's a different, quirky approach and it has the potential to be a lot of fun!