On July 29, developer Panic opened pre-orders for the highly anticipated and quite peculiar handheld Playdate. The portable GameBoy for the modern age, but with a crank, didn't just sell well on their first day. As confirmed by TechCrunch, the Playdate sold over 20,000 units in 20 minutes, completely selling out of their 2021 batch.

Panic had 20,000 consoles planned to ship out later this year with any additional orders having to wait until 2022 due to a relatively small staff. The amount of traffic caused several issues for some unfortunate customers too as many experienced errors even loading the site.

On the official Twitter for the Playdate, the team addressed customer complaints about the site showing the console as sold out and orders failing to complete. They've even discussed a potential 2023 bracket if there's enough, but the developers have said that they are far from having to push it back there yet.

playdate-console
Image via Panic Inc.

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The Playdate is a throwback handheld with a black and white screen, a two-button plus D-pad control scheme, and a crank used to control some of the games. Yes, a crank is part of the controls, not for charging the battery. It comes with a "season" of free games, or two games a week for twelve weeks after the Playdate launches plus more to come in the future. Some of the games look to be based on some of Panic's previous published work like Forrest Byrnes: Up in Smoke which revolves around the fire safety mascot from Firewatch. Panic also promised to release all the tools needed to build games for the Playdate.

In all, it's a rousing success for Panic's first foray into creating game consoles. The idea of a modern GameBoy (that still isn't back-lit) with a unique control scheme and games by indie developers clearly resonated with a large audience despite the usual clamor for better graphics, bigger games, and more powerful hardware.

The Playdate is still available for pre-order now for $179. If you do decide to buy in on this funny little handheld though, it'll be a while before it gets out the door.

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