Difference between revisions of "Playdate"

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Late July 2021 (Preorders)<br>
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Late 2021 (Shipping)
Late 2021 (Shipping)
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Revision as of 06:35, 23 July 2021

Playdate console
The front of the Playdate.
Release Date: July 29th 2021 (Preorders)

Late 2021 (Shipping)

Developers: Panic
Teenage Engineering

The Playdate is an upcoming console by Panic. Preorders will open in July of 2021, with consoles to ship to buyers an indeterminate amount of time after. It will cost $179 USD, with extra for shipping and taxes.

Games

The Playdate includes the first Season of games for free with the purchase, with 25 games being included. They will be released at a rate of two games per week for three months from when the Playdate is first powered on. These games will be provided over the built in Wi-Fi.

Further official game releases are undetermined at this time - Panic has said they want to see the response to the Season model before they decide what to do next.

Games can also be developed, shared and loaded on the Playdate's internal memory from a PC using the included USB cable with no "jailbreaking" or other such methods being required.

All Playdate games to date are singleplayer, but Panic plan on adding multiplayer functionality to the Playdate SDK some time down the road.

Accessories

The Playdate has two official accessories; the Stereo Dock and the Cover.

Development

Every Playdate console serves as a development system; as long as you have a PC with a copy of the Playdate SDK, you'll be able to use it to develop, test and play Playdate games. These games can then be shared across the internet (free or paid) and played by other players.

The Playdate SDK supports both the Lua and C programming languages, with a series of Lua-specific Playdate libraries included with the SDK in order to help development in that language. It also has a simulator for the Playdate that can be used to test games.

There will also be a secondary development system, Pulp, which allows for simple, tile based games to be developed for the Playdate entirely via a web browser.

Specifications

  • 76 x 74 x 9mm size, 86 grams in weight.
  • 180MHz Cortex M7 CPU. (STM32 F746)
  • 16MB of RAM with 32KB of L1Cache.
  • 4GB Flash storage (3.5GB usable).
  • 2.7 inch 400 x 240 (173ppi) highly reflective monochrome display with no backlight.
  • Built-in mono speaker with 3.5mm stereo headphone jack.
  • Condenser microphone with TRRS mic in.
  • D-Pad & A + B buttons, Sleep + Menu button and Power button on top.
  • Physical hardware crank that can be tucked in the side of the Playdate when not needed.
  • 802.11bgn 2.4GHz Wi-Fi & Bluetooth.
  • 8 hour battery life, two week standby time.
  • 3-Axis accelerometer.
  • USB-C for charging and data.