The Playdate has been out since April 2022 — here’s how it’s going

Portable gaming has always been a little, let’s say, different. While there have been some attempts at shrinking console gaming down into something that will fit in your hands, many of the best handheld experiences have been downright weird. Think of the Nintendo DS with its dual screens that helped inspire memorable games about walking dogs, doing surgery, and, well, whatever is going on in Electroplankton. There’s something about the smaller scale of these games that often invites creativity from developers.

The Playdate, from first-time hardware maker Panic — best known for its Mac software and publishing games like Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game — takes this idea to the extreme. It’s a tiny yellow square, not much bigger than a credit card, with a black-and-white screen and a crank that juts out of its side. It looks like a Game Boy from a parallel world. And, much like with the DS and its contemporaries, those limitations and distinct features have inspired a library of games unlike anything I’ve ever played: everything from a strategy game about cryptid photography and a turn-based samurai adventure to a role-playing game where all you do is manage inventory.

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When the Playdate first launched, one of the hooks was that the little yellow handheld came with a “season” of 24 games from notable developers like Keita Takahashi and Zach Gage. And now Panic has confirmed that a second season is coming at some point in 2025.

As for what will be included, we don’t have a lot to go on right now. Panic says that “details on price, the exact number of games, and the developers behind the games of season 2 will come in 2025.” But during a livestream today, the company said it would probably feature “about a dozen games” and will also include a “really cool surprise.”

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From the Boox Palma to the Light Phone 2, it seems that everyone is looking for distraction-free reading, if only they had the right device. I don’t blame them: every time I pull out my phone to mindlessly scroll, I know my time could be put to better use. But as the owner of many fine gadgets, I also don’t really want another device in my life, so I was pretty excited to stumble upon a partial solution with a gadget I already have: the Playdate.

Yes, I’m talking about that little yellow Game Boy from Panic and Teenage Engineering, the one with a crank jutting out of its side. Since the launch of its on-device store, Catalog, the handheld has become home to quite a range of experiences. I’ve been playing tiny city builders and dungeon crawlers and egg touchers. Even still, I was surprised to discover Playbook, a full-fledged e-reading app. Perhaps even more surprising is that it actually works pretty well.

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Last March, Panic launched a curated game shop called Catalog for its Playdate handheld. And one year later, the company says it has sold more than 150,000 games through the store. “We want to let everyone who enjoys games know that there is a vibrant game dev community making hundreds of inventive and thoughtful games for Playdate,” Arisa Sudangnoi,

head of Playdate developer relations, said in a statement. The news comes exactly two years after the handheld first launched.

At the beginning of 2024, Panic revealed that it had sold 70,000 Playdate units, and it now says that more than half of those users — 38,000 — have purchased a game through Catalog. For context, the Playdate launched with a “season” of 24 games from notable developers that came as part of the purchase price. Panic says that “about 32,000 of those users who have not bought a game are still working through the games included in Playdate Season One.” Some more numbers: there are currently 181 titles in the store, and so far, sales have grossed just over $544,000 (“after taxes, processing fees, and Panic’s 25% revenue share for distribution on Catalog,” the company says).

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Nearly two years after it first debuted, Panic has caught up on preorders for its adorable Playdate handheld. The company says that it has shipped more than 70,000 of the tiny yellow gadgets — up from 50,000 last April — and that there is now a “limited number” in stock to purchase right now on Panic’s site. (The news comes just a day after Analogue announced a similar milestone for its Pocket handheld.)

“Going forward, Panic will notify the public when Playdates are in-stock and ready to ship,” the company explains. “Customers will still be able to place an order for a Playdate when it is out of stock, but will be notified that their order won’t ship until Panic has a new batch of Playdates ready to ship.” Speaking to The Verge, Greg Maletic, head of special projects at Panic, said that the wait time for orders “should be significantly shorter now,” explaining that “it’s an order that will be fulfilled in the near term anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.”

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Panic’s little yellow handheld has sold a lot more than anticipated. Today, the company confirmed that the Playdate has sold 53,000 units, more than double the initial production run of 20,000. However, a large number of those customers are still waiting to crank away: Panic says that it has shipped 27,000 of those orders, and “the team is hard at work on getting customers their Playdates, and fully expect to deliver all pre-orders by the end of this year.”

In a statement, Playdate’s project lead Greg Maletic said, “When we started, we had no idea how big the audience would be for a weird product like this, but we told the factory: build 20,000. To have now sold more than 53,000 (and counting) is heartening. And this, at a time when parts shortages forced our delivery lead-times out as much as a year. As those lead-times shorten and Playdate delivery becomes more immediate, we’re looking forward to an even better year two.”

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