$400k worth of Playdate game consoles have gone missing in Vegas

$400k worth of Playdate game consoles have disappeared in Las Vegas.

That's according to Panic, the hardware maker behind the palm-sized, crank-operated console, with company co-founder Cabel Sasser calling it “a bit of a true crime drama” (thanks, Game File).

Sasser spoke at GDC last week, when he revealed this news, stating pallets containing the consoles had gone missing in Las Vegas. Panic, he said, was still trying to track them down.

“We checked up on our inventory levels and it was a little bit short,” Sasser said during his GDC panel – so much so that the company quickly contacted its shipping center.

“And they're like, 'Yeah, weird. These pallets – FedEx said they were delivered, but we have no trace of them. But something else you might want to know that's weird is, two weeks after your pallets went missing, two other pallets were delivered by FedEx to the construction site next door instead of our shipping warehouse.'”

Panic subsequently received a picture of these particular Playdate pallets “just sitting where they're building a Circle K in north Las Vegas,” Sasser said.

“The person who signed for the two pallets they recovered was the same person who signed for the two pallets [they] have yet to recover,” Sasser continued, adding “there's a lot of research happening” on the whole thing right now.

“Now, keep in mind we know the serial numbers of every unit, so we know exactly what serial numbers are missing. Seven of them have been registered to people that live in north Las Vegas,” he said. “So anyways, I'll keep you posted – or legally not keep you posted – depending on where this goes.”

Our Christian Donlan reviewed the Playdate console back in 2022, calling it “a fascinating puzzle in itself.”

“Attached to my memories of Mad magazine are inevitably a bunch of memories of early home computers – the C64 and Amstrad in my case – and there's a lot of that DNA here too,” he mused in Eurogamer's Playdate review.

“Games straight from someone's attic workspace or the desk in the bedroom. Games straight from their weird head and their weird perspective and their weird take on what games should be. At its best Playdate gives you this – along with the nicely handled Zeldas and the Breakouts and the things it seems to feel it should give you to be well-rounded.

“Now I've seen it, I want more of it.”