One year has passed since the integrated storefront went online.
During this month, Panic is celebrating Playdate’s second birthday, and the party favors include some steaming hot facts about the sales of Catalog games.
In April of 2022, Playdate presented the market with a total of 24 free games. In March of 2023, the company launched its Catalog shop, which consisted of sixteen curated titles that could be purchased straight on the device. Over the course of the past year, Panic has been including additional items in Catalog on a biweekly basis, and as of right now, the marketplace contains 181 games and applications. There have been more than 150,000 games sold on Catalog, which has resulted in gross revenue of $544,290 for the developers. This figure is after taking into account taxes, processing fees, and Panic’s 25 percent cut.
A Playdate Catalogue game typically costs $5.36, which is the average price. A typical installation takes up 5.03 megabytes, whereas the smallest Catalog game takes up 30.1 kilobytes and the largest one takes up 107 megabytes. Playdate comes standard with 4 gigabytes of flash storage. In addition, it contains 16 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM), an accelerometer, a display with a resolution of 400 by 240 (1 bit), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, a mono speaker, a condenser microphone, and a stereo headphone port. I should also mention that it has a charming little crank.
Considering that the data that Panic presented today pertain to catalog purchases, it is clear that they only tell a portion of the story. There are more than 800 Playdate games and apps accessible on itch.io alone, and the community that exists on that platform is energetic and lively. Catalogue, on the other hand, only offers a little under 200 titles. In the Playdate retrospective that was released the previous week, I characterized the experience of viewing the itch.io page of the device as being similar to “hanging out in a friendly underground clubhouse populated by crank-obsessed video game freaks.” On the other hand, in a positive way.
Mars After Midnight, created by Lucas Pope, Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure, developed by Keita Takahashi’s studio uvula, and Zipper, created by Bennett Foddy, are some of the most prominent titles that Playdate supports. Playdate also supports games that were developed by both new and seasoned creators. Root Bear, Spellcorked, Word Trip, Chopter Copter, and Pocket Pets are some of the games that I enjoy playing the most that I have personally.
This is the very first time that Panic has given the public access to information regarding the revenue-sharing mechanism or the sales of Playdate games. The 25 percent cut that Panic takes is lower than the benchmark that is set by Steam, which receives 30 percent of the majority of game purchases. However, it is more than divided on the Epic Games Store, which reserves 12 percent for Epic.
Playdate is available at a price of $199, and a teal cover can be purchased as an additional $30 option. Over the course of more than two years, Panic has been hyping the Stereo Dock, which is a cute Playdate charging station, Bluetooth speaker, and pen holder. However, the item is still “coming soon.” Greg Maletic, who is in charge of the Playdate project, recently informed Engadget that they should anticipate an update within the next few months. However, there is no information regarding the price or release timeframe for the Stereo Dock.
“We apologize to everyone with a Playdate who has been waiting patiently for the Stereo Dock; it’s been a trickier project than we anticipated and we had a few false starts,” Maletic explained to reporters. We believed that by having our factory develop the software for the Stereo Dock, we would be able to save some time on that project; but, we have realized that there are situations in which you do not always want that to necessarily be the case. We have the tangible prototypes to demonstrate that the Stereo Dock is very much alive and well for the time being! By the end of this year, we anticipate having a formal update on when you will be able to purchase one.
In the previous two years, more than 70,000 Playdates have been sold, and according to Panic, a little more than half of all owners have purchased a Catalog game. Playdates have been sold because of their popularity.