"We never really thought anyone was going to make a Playdate game"
It's now been two years since the hotly anticipated launch of Panic's handheld, the Playdate.
70,000 units had been sold as of February 2024, and Panic revealed a few more stats about its cranky yellow console last week, to celebrate its anniversary.
150,000 games have been sold since the March 2023 launch of the Playdate storefront, Catalog, representing $544,290 in revenue for the developers behind them. Panic's shop featured 181 games as of April 3, 2024, plus over 800 titles available to sideload via itch.io and the likes.
And that, in itself, is a huge victory for the Panic team.
"We never really thought anyone was going to make a Playdate game," Greg Maletic, Panic's head of special projects and Playdate, tells us when we meet at the Game Developers Conference last month. He says that's the reason why Panic planned Season One, 24 titles that progressively release on players' consoles upon registration.
"We just didn't want to put it out there and say 'Gosh, we can't wait to see what you do with that!'... there was gonna be fun that you got from the device when it arrived in your mailbox, and that was the season idea. But we never imagined there'd be a thousand games out for it in this span of time."
He continues: "If for some weird reason we had to render a verdict right now, 'What happened with Playdate', I think we would say it was a success. It was a success beyond what we imagined."
On the creators' side, head of Playdate developer relations Arisa Sudangnoi adds that the success feels unmitigated, especially since the launch of Pulp, Playdate's very own in-browser game making tool, which doesn't require any previous programming experience.
"The fact that so many people have mentioned to us that it's their first time making a game and it just brings them so much joy that they were able to make their dream come true… that in itself is a success," she says.
That's not to say the journey has been smooth sailing. COVID-19, parts availability, defective batteries right
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