2022 was the year of the gaming handhelds. We saw portable PCs and cloud gaming devices make a splash, but none stood out to me more than the Playdate. While other devices were interested in giving players more ways to play high-quality AAA releases portably, the Playdate went a widely different route. It instead stood out because of its limitations, with its small size, one-bit display, and crank.

Earlier this year, I spoke to several indie developers to learn more about what attracted them to the system ahead of its release. Now, eight months after the handheld started rolling out, the odd little device has become my favorite piece of new gaming tech released this year. To get a sense of what’s next for the Playdate, I spoke to Greg Maletic, Director of Special Project at Panic, to see what they’ve learned during the system’s first year on the market as well as what’s in store for it in 2023.

The Playdate wait

Ahead of the launch of Playdate, it was unknown if the oddball handheld would be a success despite the initial developer interest and social media virality. Even Panic’s expectations were somewhat muted at first but grew once the system was actually in players’ hands.

“Initially, our intention was if we sell 10,000 of these, we’ll be fine,” Maletic tells Digital Trends. “But as the project went on and got bigger and bigger and bigger, our hopes got for it as well got bigger. We had no idea what we were going to sell. We had…