The long-promised Playdate Stereo Dock is officially dead, at least for now. After many months with the desktop accessory stuck in development limbo, Panic has updated product page, so it no longer says “coming soon,” but instead has been put on indefinite pause due to issues with the Bluetooth experience, the factory that handled it, and the rising costs of resolving it all. The Stereo Dock, first announced in 2021, was intended to be a charging dock that also doubles as a Bluetooth speaker (and pen holder), as well as being a cute way to display your Playdate when not in use. But things didn't go as planned.
The Playdate team said they ran into some unexpected obstacles when trying to bring the idea to life and found that “making the Stereo Dock was almost more challenging than making the Playdate itself.” The statement explains:
What happened? Well, our first regret was assuming that our factory at the time, a factory that made a lot of Bluetooth speakers, could easily design the electronics for us, saving us a lot of time and money. That went pretty well at first. But they, in turn, outsourced the software and Bluetooth chipset to another company in another country.
As a result, the Stereo Dock frequently crashed; It was enough to quickly adjust the volume. The Bluetooth pairing/unpairing experience was difficult. And when we played music, it just didn't sound very good. Going back and forth between three companies trying to fix mistakes became very challenging. And worst of all: the cost of the Stereo Dock continued to rise more and more.
It goes on to say that the team worked to improve the experience, even purchasing the Bluetooth chipset source code in hopes of fixing the issues, but to no avail. While there are “several beautiful finished prototypes,” Panic says they “weren't very good to use.” The official update was foreshadowed in a social media exchange shared on reddit Earlier this month, Panic's Cabel Sasser, responding to a question about the status of Stereo Dock, said that it “turned out to be incredibly difficult for a lot of incredibly dumb reasons” and was put on pause.
The team says it is now fully refocusing on the continued production of Playdate. There may still be a chance we'll see the Stereo Dock at some point, but don't hold your breath. “Will it ever come? “We’re still waiting for it,” Panic said. “Will it be coming soon? Unlikely.”
