The portable crank game console Playdate is delayed until next year

The portable game console Playdate, with its characteristic crank, may not be quite as long-awaited as recently delayed Steam Deck, but many see potential in the small machine. Unfortunately, it becomes another in the line of products that are delayed, partly due to the prevailing component shortage in the world, and partly due to poor quality of the batteries used.

In a posts on its website, the company behind Playdate, Panic, explains how it is. When they received the first 5,000 units, they discovered major problems with the batteries. They did not have the battery life they were aiming for at all and some devices could not be turned on or charged. They therefore had to shut down production to switch to a new battery supplier. Exactly the same type of batteries had previously worked without problems, but Panic says that something must have changed along the way.

Now the new batteries have arrived, which meet their requirements to the letter. But despite that, they have to postpone the product release, and the first units that should have been sent out at the end of 2021 will now have to wait until the beginning of 2022. One of the problems is the CPU they used, which they will now not get more copies of in two years. Therefore, they have redesigned the console’s motherboard to be able to use a similar processor with better accessibility.

There are also some other component flaws that can haunt, but they say they work hard to get around them so that they can produce as many Playdates as possible. This is what the delivery schedule looks like at the moment: