You might recall the quirky Playdate, the handheld gaming console with a manual crank on the side, that was announced back in 2019. Well, it's still happening and in a video update streamed today, we got new details about this upcoming indie console from video game publisher Panic.

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As part of its "Season 1", the Playdate will receive 24 free games, including a new title from Return Of The Obra Dinn's creator. The season lasts for a period of 12 weeks where every week, two new games automatically download onto the device. The title screen, names and developers of 21 of Season 1's games have been revealed and Panic says that there will be "a few extra surprise games along the way". Additional details about the gameplays have been intentionally kept under wraps. Below you can find information about the revealed titles (courtesy of The Verge):

• Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure by uvula (Keita Takahashi, Ryan Mohler), Matthew Grimm, and Shaun Inman
• Battleship Godios by TPM.Co Soft Works.
• Casual Birder by Diego Garcia with music by Max Coburn
• DemonQuest 85 by Alex Ashby, Lawrence Bishop, Duncan Fyfe, Belinda Leung, and Jared Emerson-Johnson
• Echoic Memory by Samantha Kalman, Everest Pipkin, Carol Mertz, and Rachelle Viola
• Executive Golf DX by davemakes
• Flipper Lifter by Serenity Forge
• Forrest Byrnes: Up in Smoke by Nels Anderson and Christina “castpixel” Neofotistou
• Hyper Meteor by Vertex Pop (Mobeen Fikree, Robby Duguay, and h heron)
• Lost Your Marbles by Sweet Baby Inc. & Friends
• Omaze by Gregory Kogos
• Pick Pack Pup by Nic Magnier and Arthur Hamer (he/him) with music by Logan Gabriel
• Questy Chess by Dadako
• Ratcheteer by Shaun Inman, Matthew Grimm, and Charlie Davis
• Sasquatchers by Chuck Jordan with music and sound by Jared Emerson-Johnson
• Snak by Zach Gage with art by Neven Mrgan
• Spellcorked! by Jada Gibbs, Nick Splendorr, Ryan Splendorr, and Tony Ghostbrite with music by A Shell in the Pit (Em Halberstadt)
• Zipper by Bennett Foddy
• Saturday Edition by Chris Makris with music by A Shell in the Pit (Gord McGladdery, Alfonso Salinas)
• Whitewater Wipeout by Chuhai Labs (Giles Goddard, Mark Lentz, Peter Traylor, Hero Liao, Remy Thor, Charlie March, Kensaku Nakata, Zach Aikman, Mihoko Terao, and Kinsey Burke)

Also announced today are a couple of accessories. First we have the "Stereo Dock" that works as a Bluetooth speaker and a pen holder but no pricing have been revealed for it. Then we have the $29 magnetic cover.

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The Playdate will cost $179 and pre-orders will open sometime in July. Once you own one, you will also be able to create your own games with the free SDK and the browser-based Pulp game maker. As for side-loading games, the company says that it is easy to do so directly onto the handheld.

Playdate Official Website

 

[lordelan]

Why make it black and white? Just why?

Battery life.

 

[6adget]

I'm pretty sure most kids would rather get socks for christmas. There is no way that those involved in creating this is so out of touch that they actually think this will sell. With price. And the crank. And the screen. And the name. Pretty sure we're going to hear about a scandal at some point.

 

[raxadian]

Battery life.

We are not in the 90s, they could just use a rechargeable battery like you know the Nintendo GBA SP, the Nintendo DS; the PSP, the Vita, the 3DS; you name it.

I used my Gameboy a lot in the 90s and while some games were really good I see no point in the Playdate.

 

[lordelan]

We are not in the 90s, they could just use a rechargeable battery like you know the Nintendo GBA SP, the Nintendo DS; the PSP, the Vita, the 3DS; you name it.

I used my Gameboy a lot in the 90s and whilw some games were really good I see no point in the Playdate.

This doesn't have much to do with the 90's.
Battery life is a serious point for handhelds and I don't know if you ever compared the battery life of an Android tablet to an Ebook reader.
I get your point though (and I doubt this has an e-ink display).
Still: Battery life + less needed work/assets to develop a game for it.
All in all it's more like an experimental fun console rather than a serious competitor to any recent handheld.

 

[tpax]

Skyrim port for this thing when?


It's very unfortunate, that the screen is not backlit. Otherwise it's an interesting device. I might pre-order it, since this is such a unique things that will probably disappear from the knowledge of the planet earth in a year or two.

 

[GenNaz]

I'm pretty sure most kids would rather get socks for christmas. There is no way that those involved in creating this is so out of touch that they actually think this will sell. With price. And the crank. And the screen. And the name. Pretty sure we're going to hear about a scandal at some point.

I don't get the impression that this is being marketed towards kids.

 

[Xzi]

Yet another novelty handheld to fill garbage dumps with. They're about three decades behind the curve on this one.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Wow, $179 for this thing? Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig pass, I'd maybe pay like $50 max for the kind of specs this thing is touting, no way in hell is this thing gonna be worth that much even if they included all the games ever released and not just "season 1" in the price.

 

[N10A]

Very cool idea but it costs way too much. Maybe I'll just wait until the inevitable price drop after this thing under preforms commercially. You'll probably be able to pick one of these up on ebay for 50 bucks in a year or so.

 

[Sono]

lol @ the specs...
For that price you can get a brand new 3DS (or two 2DS with a little extra money), and even the lowest specs 3DS has better specs and more hardware. The only thing the 3DS lacks is the crank, and it only has 16k icache and 16k dcache respectively, and we have no driver for the hidden Bluetooth chip.
But other than these, you get two screens (one is the same resolution with color, other is touchscreen), more RAM, more CPU cycles and 2 or 4 cores, a real GPU, a programmable DSP, and at medium brightness and a well-made game you get the same or better battery life as well.
Oh, and the CPU of the 3DS contains Java cores, while the M7 doesn't.

 

[xatzimi]

Man, Obra Dinn on this would be so cool, but it's probably not practical. Which game is the Lucas Pope one, though? I don't see it

 

[Gronbar]

Price, design and marketing is one to one Apple, but Apple at least have specs and ecosystem. This console will be dead year later or less.

 

[frankGT]

Looks cool.
The site tries so desperately to sell its coolness it becomes a marketing assault that accentuates how everything around it looks expensive except for the thing itself and its software.
It looks like it will have shovelware games with no depth...

 

[BitMasterPlus]

Meh, I ain't gettin' this garbage for various reasons. It's gonna be funny how this will turn out tho.

 

[raxadian]

This doesn't have much to do with the 90's.
Battery life is a serious point for handhelds and I don't know if you ever compared the battery life of an Android tablet to an Ebook reader.
I get your point though (and I doubt this has an e-ink display).
Still: Battery life + less needed work/assets to develop a game for it.
All in all it's more like an experimental fun console rather than a serious competitor to any recent handheld.

The problem is... how much is a Switch Lite with a game included? If you get one used you can get it by the same price as this thing.

If you have nostalgia for Game& Watch type games Nintendo has a new Game & Watch with several games much cheaper than this.

 

[chrisrlink]

they will learn the hard way unless your the big 3 you will get crushed

 

[AlexMCS]

Why make it?

Fixed. The crank as the sole gimmick is a very ballsy move, I gotta say.
Also, cranks are not fun once the novelty factor wears out.

As mentioned before, it is a semi-cool idea, but the price they are asking for is hysterically high.
This should cost $60 tops.

Emulating this will be a no brainer. I think emulating may actually improve whatever game this gets.

 

[raxadian]

Fixed. The crank as the sole gimmick is a very ballsy move, I gotta say.
Also, cranks are not fun once the novelty factor wears out.

As mentioned before, it is a semi-cool idea, but the price they are asking for is hysterically high.
This should cost $60 tops.

Emulating this will be a no brainer. I think emulating may actually improve whatever game this gets.

They are simple games in monocrome, maybe one or two of them are good but honesty even that overpriced portable with cardridges (That's not from Nintendo) is a better product than this.

 

[pedro702]

nintendo sells a gw for like 45 euros here and yet this will cost 179$ for a crank? this will be on the discount bina fter 6 months if it even has a retail release, if its online only it will just sit there and die a slow death on the website.

 

[IC_]

Wonder how long til there is an emulator for this thing lol. I can't imagine it'd be too hard to map turning the crank to rotating a control stick.

I'm pretty sure the SDK already includes one.