Panic has announced that Playmate, its portable console with crank, will be launched in early 2022. It was expected that the first units of the machine began to be sent at the end of 2021.
It is not the only hardware that has been delayed this week: yesterday we learned that Steam Deck, the Valve laptop, also goes next year. In the case of Playmate, however, the delay does not have to do with the shortage of components: the company mentions the problems with the batteries of the first units as the reason for the delay.
According to Panic on his website, the first 5,000 units they received were not surrendering as expected: the battery was exhausted faster from the account, and in some cases they did not charge again. After a month of testing, they decided to stop production and replace batteries by other different, from a different provider. This last minute change has forced the shipping window.
The semiconductors have also given war, yes. As the company explains, the CPU that PLAYMATE currently uses will not be available during the next two years, so they have had to make changes there as well: the units that begin to manufacture next year will use a similar but most available CPU.. It seems that it is not the only scarcity with which they are having to deal with, however; It seems that it will be the general tonic for a while.
PLAYMATE is a portable console that in addition to a crosshead and two buttons includes a very particular control mechanism: a crank placed on one side of the machine. In addition, its games are distributed by seasons; The first is included with the console itself, and includes 24 games that will be distributed from two in two for 12 weeks. Grace is in the people who make these games, from Bennett Toddy or Data Takanashi to Zach Gage or the Vertex Pop Studio. It will be on Playmate where Mars After Midnight comes out, the next game of Lucas Pope.