Originally published at: Playdate pre-orders open | Boing Boing
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Stupid work.
Wasn’t able to break free until 2:30eastern (90 minutes after pre-orders opened). By that point they already burned through the 20,000 units anticipated for 2021 release.
I think the thing I am most excited about this is the pending release of the development stack. I’ve been playing around with Panic’s new(ish) IDE “Nova” for a few months, as I understand it the Playdate dev environment will be geared towards this IDE.
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I love these kinds of experimental game devices, especially the ones with new interfaces, even though I have no interest in buying one, nor am I even sure it’ll result in any interesting games being made. The very fact that people are thinking about games in significantly different ways is enough for this to be worthwhile.
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Can I pay extra for the hand crank charging option?
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I set a reminder and preördered one at about 10:03 PST (their site only crashed for a minute or two). I considered just waiting, since I don’t love the PR stunt angle, but then I was like eh whatever.
It will be lavishly irritating if they miss their shipping date though.
@bobtato do they even have a shipping date at this point, beyond “2021”?
At this point I just assume everyone will miss their shipping date, no matter what.
I put in my pre-order and it says “preorders taken today will ship in 2022”
So… 
It will be one of those things that I forget about and then one day I’ll get a magical email surprise, “Your Playdate has shipped!” and it will be fun to anticipate its delivery, etc.
Question: do pre-orders have access to the Playdate SDK and simulator to start dev work in advance?
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Last I heard they said “late 2021”, and I interpret that to mean “December 30th”. Considering the time they’ve taken, and the publicity they’ve paid to create around this preörder campaign, there wouldn’t be much excuse for overrunning, but there’s also no incentive to do it early. In fact, some people would complain if they did ship in time for xmas now.
No – they originally implied tools would be available some time ago (before the console shipped), and lately they’ve started teasing some kind of high-level web IDE, but they still aren’t committing to a date for either. Favored developers have been making games for it for a while, so a toolchain exists, but I would guess it still requires hand-holding from Panic and so can’t be released generally.
If it weren’t made by reputable people, I’d be harboring serious doubts about the whole project, as it’s usually a red flag when something that’s already delayed keeps announcing ambitious new features. I’m choosing to be optimistic though.
They took my money. When I saw someone already put doom on it I was sold:
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Watching them fire the chaingun with the handcrank brought joy to my jaded, cynical heart.
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This is almost enough to make me want one of these things. Shooting a chaingun like that would be incredibly satisfying.
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I’ve ordered one for me & one for my (adult) younger brother. As soon as I heard that the company behind Untitled Goose Game was making a handheld console I was all in, & now I’ve got a pretty much guaranteed bright spot to look forward to in 2022.
Does House House have something to do with this console?
Serious question - I’m extra impressed if there’s a connection between the two but I haven’t been able to find it.
the connection is that Panic was the publisher (of The Untitled Goose Game), and worked through the marketing and release strategy for it. They weren’t the developers, but may have influenced the game a bit. Certainly, they have a specific taste, which will show up in the games created for the Playdate.
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