Panic’s Playdate handheld will be ready for streamers when it launches sometime this year

• March 24, 2021

We’re still waiting on a release date for the Playdate, a tiny handheld with a crank made by Untitled Goose Game publisher Panic, but Panic just showed off a new feature for the device on the official Playdate Twitter account: you’ll be able to plug the Playdate in to your computer and mirror its screen.

As Playdate says in its tweet, there are a lot of potential use-cases for this, including better accessibility and making it easier to stream your Playdate gameplay. And pressing the virtual buttons in the Playdate app will pass them back to your Playdate device, giving you another way to play your games. (It doesn’t look like there’s a virtual crank, but maybe that’s something Panic hasn’t shown off yet.)

Here’s a short video of the computer connection in action:

While the Playdate computer app may look a little small in this video, you’ll be able to make it bigger, Panic said in a reply on Twitter. And if you listen closely to the video, you can also hear some extremely charming Playdate menu sound effects, which Panic says are new.

The Playdate was first revealed in 2019, with games in development from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, Good Sudoku developer Zach Gage, and more. At the time, Panic expected to ship the Playdate in early 2020, but said in October that it expects to kick off orders in “early 2021.”

Panic has also set up a Twitter account, @playdateAlerts, that will only tweet when there is “important” news about the Playdate. If you want to know exactly when you can order the device, @playdateAlerts seems like it a good account to follow.

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We’re still waiting on a release date for the Playdate, a tiny handheld with a crank made by Untitled Goose Game publisher Panic, but Panic just showed off a new feature for the device on the official Playdate Twitter account: you’ll be able to plug the Playdate in to your…