'They weren't very good to use': Panic halts development of the Playdate Stereo Dock

The Playdate Stereo Dock has been consigned to the realm of dreams (for now) with Panic struggling to realize its vision for the audio accessory.

In an update shared on the Playdate website, Panic said it hopes the Stereo Dock will still launch "someday" but noted its current production plans have been placed on hold.

The company said that birthing the dock had become "almost more challenging than making the Playdate itself," and explained that fraught partnerships and spiraling development costs have left the current iteration of the project dead in the water.

"What happened? Well, our first regret was assuming that our factory at that time—a factory that made lots of Bluetooth speakers—could easily design the electronics for us, saving us lots of time and money. That went pretty well at first. But they, in turn, outsourced the Bluetooth software and chipset to another company in another country," wrote Panic.

"As a result, the Stereo Dock would crash often–rapidly adjusting the volume would do it. The Bluetooth pairing/unpairing experience was rough. And when we played music, it just didn't sound very good. The back-and-forth between three companies trying to fix bugs became a huge challenge. And worst of all: the cost of the Stereo Dock kept getting higher and higher."

Panic eventually took over the audio production process and hand-tuned the speaker's EQ curves to bolster its output. It also negotiated a buyout of the bluetooth chipset source code with a view to taking over development and improving the user experience, only to be met with some "gnarly code" that made life even more difficult.

Hitting pause on the stereo dock

"We kept pushing forward. We got a number of beautiful finished prototypes, in beautiful final packaging, that look incredible on our desks. But they weren’t very good to use. And if we’re going to ship a product, it has to be, at least, good," continued Panic. "Eventually we hit that painful line: we’re spending more to make this product than we are likely to ever make back from it. And so, we hit pause."

The company still hopes it will have the time and resources to reboot the project in the future, but for now remains focused on Playdate itself.

Panic has sold over 70,000 units of Playdate since launching the console in 2022, although it encountered plenty of challenges along the way. It also launched Catalog, a bona fide storefront for Playdate developers and players, and retrieved around $400,000 worth of Playdate stock that vanished in Las Vegas in rather suspicious circumstances.