Playdate pre-orders begin next month, with Panic revealing Season One games

Panic has revealed further details for its upcoming handheld system Playdate, with pre-orders beginning in July.

The exact date for pre-orders is expected to be announced “soon” (with at least a week’s warning before pre-orders open) but the console is set to begin shipping later this year.

According to Panic, its factory is currently manufacturing an initial order of 20,000 units which it hopes will cover early demand.

The handheld is priced at $179 (no UK price is available yet) – a $30 increase over its initially announced price, though purchases now get 24 games in Season One, rather than the originally planned 12. Additionally, the handheld’s planned 2GB of memory has been upped to 4GB.

Indie developers, such as Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, will be creating games for the platform, with two games being released each week in Season One. Papers Please and Return of the Obra Dinn Lucas Pope will also be producing a game for the platform, titled Mars After Midnight.

The Playdate features a 400×240 2.7-inch black-and-white screen, a D-pad with two buttons and most notably a crank. Panic describes the crank as a rotating analogue controller that puts a whole new spin on games.”

Additionally, as revealed in the update video above, the Playdate has an optional dock. The dock charges the handheld, doubles as a bluetooth speaker and, perhaps most excitingly, features a pen holder and a Playdate ballpoint pen. Not sure why, but we want one.

The Playdate Season One games are as follows:

• Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure
• Battleship Godios
• Boogie Loops
• Casual Birder
• DemonQuest 85
• Echoic Memory
• Executive Golf DX
• Flipper Lifter
• Forrest Byrnes: Up in Smoke
• Hyper Meteor
• Lost Your Marbles
• Omaze
• Pick Pack Pup
• Questy Chess
• Ratcheteer
• Sasquatchers
• Snak
• Spellcorked!
• Zipper
• Saturday Edition
• Whitewater Wipeout