The Playdate crank console has been shipping for a few days. According to the American manufacturer Panic, the first examples of the handle go to buyers. If you want to get a Playdate now, you have to pre-order; according to the manufacturer, the entire production capacity of the Playdate is already occupied with pre-orders.
Anyone who wants to order a crank console now will have to wait a long time: according to Panic, new orders will probably not be fulfilled until next year. The playdate is only offered in US dollars on the company’s US website, but Panic also promises shipping to European countries like Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Crank console in the simulator.
If you want to develop for Playdate, you can let off steam without your own copy: in February, Panic has a Handheld Software Development Kit Released. You can then test the games through a built-in simulator that includes a digital crank. The Panic Playdate console is controlled with a crank. All games are specially developed for Playdate. In the game “Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure”, the crank is used to allow the character to run forward or, when he turns in the opposite direction, to go back in time.
Panic had started taking pre-orders for the crank device last summer. The first 5,000 copies produced were found to have a critical battery failure, requiring battery replacement on all production consoles. At the moment, 20,000 copies of Playdate should be produced, Panic wrote in a blog post last November.
The American company also reported other delivery problems: the CPU, which will be installed in the first Playdate consoles, was sold out; according to Panic, it would take two years to get supplies. Therefore, they have developed a hardware revision with a different motherboard, which will fit one more available CPU. $180 plus shipping
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