Panic's Playdate Is Pushed to 2022 as Battery Issues, Component Shortages Crank Up the Pressure

Panic's Playdate, the innovative handheld console with a black-and-white display and hand-crank controller, has been delayed into 2022 following the discovery of an issue with the device's batteries.

Unveiled two years ago and more recently provided to iFixit for a teardown, the Playdate is an unusual console - and not just because of its black and white e-paper-like Sharp Memory LCD panel. As well as more traditional controls on the front, the console includes a flip-out hand-crank — allowing two-directional analog control.

Couple this with the ability to easily make your own games and a curious delivery mechanism which sees owners receive two new games each Monday for the first three months, and it's no surprise to see that the gadget has proven popular.

Unfortunately for those who managed to get into the first production batch when pre-orders opened earlier this year, there's been a delay - thanks to some batteries which weren't performing as they should.

"As our first 5,000 finished Playdate units arrived at our warehouse in California for 2021, we began to test a few of them," Panic explains in an email to customers. "We quickly became concerned that some of them weren’t giving us the battery life we expected.

"Playdate’s battery is designed to last a very long time, and always be ready for you, even if not used for a while. But that was not the case: in fact, we found a number of units with batteries so drained, Playdate wouldn’t power on at all — and couldn’t be charged. That’s a battery worst-case scenario."

The solution: Panic is opting to replace all the batteries, including those which appeared to test fine, with units from a different supplier. It's a process which means a delay to the very first batch — pushing what should have been late-2021 deliveries into early-2022, the company has confirmed.

For customers outside the first two order groups — representing the first 20,000 units — there's no movement on the some-time-in-2022 scheduled delivery date, but that could change: Panic has confirmed it is experiencing component shortages which have, in at least one case, necessitated a redesign of the circuitry.

"With lots of pre-orders in place, we immediately placed an order at our factory for all the parts needed for 2022 units and beyond," the company explains. "The response was… sobering. Many of our parts have been delayed significantly. In fact, we can’t get any more of Playdate’s current CPU for — you’re not going to believe this — two years. Like, 730 days."

As a result, a new revision of the board — which will be used in units produced in 2022 — switches to an unnamed "similar, but more widely available, CPU" with shorter lead times. "There are a number of other part shortages we're trying to outsmart right now," Panic continues, "and while it’s stressful and frustrating, rest assured we will do everything we can to make as many Playdates as we can for you."

More information on the project, and pre-orders for a unit for delivery — hopefully — in 2022, is available on the Playdate website.