Hot on the heels of yesterday's delay of Valve's Steam Deck handheld gaming PC comes the delay of another upcoming handheld platform. Thursday morning came the announcement that the Playdate handheld console, a unique device with a crank method of user input, is being delayed from its 2021 release window. The Playdate is now tentatively scheduled to launch in 2022, along with the device's 25 exclusive launch games that make up Season 1 of its content plans.
In a surprisingly transparent message to those who pre-ordered a Playdate console, the company confirmed that the initial version of the handheld had a serious hardware issue. Specifically, batteries for the Playdate were defective in numbers that creator Panic wasn't comfortable with. Panic in turn decided to replace the batteries on all currently finished Playdates and change the manufacturing for all future devices. The cost is that the finished Playdates will now go out in early 2022.
Panic has some unfortunate news to share even beyond the delay, however. With the manufacturing of the Playdate back in motion, Panic says that it ramped up its efforts to secure enough components for all of the devices currently pre-ordered. In that process, Panic discovered that several key components are largely unavailable in the quantity Panic needs for the Playdate. Specifically, the Playdate's CPU is unavailable for 730 days -- over two years.
Luckily, Panic has been able to redesign the Playdate to run with a different CPU that isn't in such limited supply. It's moving forward with that redesign for new Playdates, and is otherwise still hard at work figuring out how to deal shortages with other key components. Panic doesn't explicitly hint at further delays, but it's possible that the queue for later orders may be pushed out further than it was before.
The schedule as it stands has the first 50,000 Playdates completed all arriving in 2022. However, units past 50,000 are currently stuck in an ambiguous timeframe of "probably 2023," but Panic admits it can't commit to that yet. It's not a situation Panic wishes it was in, but it's doing its best given the global component shortage isn't likely to end soon.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the entire video game industry in profound ways. It isn't just an issue with Playdate being a new product or Panic being a relatively young company. After all, the Steam Deck was just delayed, too. Even Valve isn't immune to supply line issues. The situation is disappointing, but things will hopefully only get better from here.
Playdate launches in early 2022.