Two years ago today, Panic launched its Playdate handheld.
With its bright yellow casing, monochrome screen and unique crank interface, it certainly made a strong first impression – and it was recently confirmed to have sold over 70,000 units.
Panic has today announced software sales figures for the first time and has revealed that over 150,000 games have been sold on the Playdate's Catalog digital store since it opened in March 2023, earning $544,290.12 in gross revenue for developers (after taxes, processing fees, and Panic’s 25% revenue share for distribution).
"For the past year Catalog’s storefront has been updated bi-weekly with a handful of titles, now the storefront has 181 games and apps from first-time to seasoned game developers alike," reads Panic's PR. "This number is of course not indicative of Playdate’s full game library, as it does not take into account the 800+ Playdate games and apps available on itch.io."
The company has also released some interesting data relating to Catalog:
- The average Playdate game price is $5.36. Playdate game prices are up to the developer and have been priced as low as $1 and as high as $15
- The average Playdate game price during the first Catalog sale was $4.50
- 1,500 players first bought a game in Catalog during the sale
- The top regions for game purchases are the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and Japan
- Biggest game - 107MB
- Average game size - 5.03MB
- Smallest game size - 30.1KB