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Panic has announced that pre-orders for its quirky monochrome mini-console-with-a-crank Playdate will go live next month with the hardware set to ship later in the year.
A new video update for the console also revealed the number of exclusive games for the first season of the unit has increased from the originally planned 12 to a whopping 24 minigames from a range of developers. Owners will now get two new games every week for twelve weeks beamed directly to their console, with “a few surprises” also promised over the course of the season.
What’s more, it was announced that Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers Please creator, Lucas Pope is creating a game for the system entitled Mars After Midnight, although it appears that might not be one of the Season One games with Pope himself appearing on the broadcast to say there was no timeframe for his title just yet.
The presentation also revealed an adorable new accessory for the Playdate that acts as a charging dock, a Bluetooth stereo speaker, a TV-like stand and a pen holder (complete with exclusive Playdate pen), with pricing and release information for that expected later in the year. Finally, we were introduced to Pulp for Playdate, a free software tool that will allow anyone to create their own games for the machine using a web browser and a custom scripting language.
The Playdate console itself, meanwhile, will cost $179 including the entire full Season One of games (UK pricing is yet to be confirmed) and pre-orders will go live on the Playdate website at some point in July. While no exact date was given, Panic say they’ll give everyone a week’s headsup before they pull the trigger, with shipping expected to start later this year.
The Playdate was originally revealed back in 2019 and our Josh had some thoughts on how it could save the handheld gaming drought that you can read over here.
