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

Playdate’s second season sucked me back into the little yellow handheld

2025-07-11T13:31:54-04:00

The Playdate is easy to forget about. It's colorful and weird, but it's also tiny. Like the Game Boy Micro before it, sometimes I toss it in a bag and then can't remember where I put it. But over the past few weeks, the yellow handheld has been in constant rotation in my house, despite being up against big distractions like Mario Kart World and Death Stranding 2, thanks to the Playdate's now-complete second season of games.

The seasonal structure is one of the unique aspects of the Playdate. When the handheld first launched in 2022, owners got access to a curated selection of 24 games that were released over time. It was a great introductio …

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Playdate’s second season is off to a great (and very weird) start

2025-05-30T20:15:06-04:00

A lot of games have been released for the Playdate since it launched in 2022, as a quick browse of itch.io or the Catalog shop will attest. But still, there's something unique about the handheld's seasonal format, which just kicked off its second iteration. When it first launched, the Playdate came with 24 games from notable indie developers that were steadily released on a weekly cadence, making a perfect introduction to the little yellow device and its crank. Now, a few years later, we finally have season 2, and it's off to a solid start - and it even includes a bizarre mystery.

The new season runs for the next six weeks and totals a doze …

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Playdate’s second season of games starts in May

2025-04-14T16:04:50-04:00

Playdate is about to get a big batch of new games. Today, Panic confirmed the first details of the handheld's upcoming season 2, which will include 12 new games and run from May 29th to July 3rd, with two titles releasing each week. The full season will cost $39.

When the Playdate first launched back in 2022, it similarly came with a number of games from notable developers that released over time. The idea was that every Playdate owner would receive these mystery games at the same time as they launched weekly throughout the season, but ensuing shipping delays put a wrench in that plan. Panic says that with this second season it "hopes to de …

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The Playdate is about to get a price increase

2025-03-19T09:42:13-04:00

The Playdate, Panic's cranky little console that could, is going to get $30 more expensive next week. Panic announced the increase in an email to customers, bringing the bright yellow handheld's price from $199 to $229.

Yeah, so, guess what: after getting up and running at our new factory, they soon let us know that it would cost quite a bit more to make a Playdate than it did at our previous factory. We were not very excited to hear this! (What next?!) But as a result, on March 25th, brand new Playdate systems will be priced at $229.

It seemed important to give you a heads up before this happened - if you've been on the fence, we didn' …

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Playdate is getting a second season of games in 2025

2024-10-31T13:29:15-04:00

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."

Last year Panic launched a Playdate store …

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The Playdate Stereo Dock has been shelved

2024-10-29T10:45:31-04:00

So long for now, Playdate Stereo Dock. | Screenshot: Playdate

Well, we finally know what's up with Panic's Playdate Stereo Dock. It's not coming - at least, not for a while. In an update to the Stereo Dock's page, the company describes the challenges it faced in getting a good prototype, but says that, in the end, the device didn't meet its standards.

The Stereo Dock was going to be a small desktop Bluetooth speaker and pen holder that you could attach a Playdate to. Panic first announced the Stereo Dock in 2021, when it was still working toward releasing the Playdate.

On the web page, the company describes the unexpected challenges it faced getting the Stereo Dock to market:

What happened? Well, ou …

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The Playdate makes a surprisingly good e-reader

2024-07-05T10:00:00-04:00

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 h …

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Playdate has sold 150,000 games in the last year

2024-04-18T08:00:00-04:00

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 thr …

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You can finally buy a Playdate without waiting for months

2024-02-13T12:00:00-05:00

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 …

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Panic says it’s sold more than 50,000 Playdate handhelds

2023-04-18T09:17:05-04:00

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 …

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