For a long time, I was in a rut for years as far as game development. I dabbled in a bunch of engines, but never got something off the ground. With the playdate I banged out two titles (you can find them at https://neverall.itch.io) and had a fun time and was able to include my kids in the game development process (btw, 3x5 blank index cards are the exact ratio as the playdate screen and are great for drawing art on).

I think I made back more than I invested in buying a playdate, and it was a fun journey. I tried to submit both the games to the catalog store, but they weren't up to their quality standards... I might circle back to try to improve them enough for that. I am sure I would probably have made orders of magnitude more in the catalog, so if you wanna be a bit more profitable, look at the standards for the games on the store, and try to aim for that. Selling on itch isn't going to do it.

Yeah, you won't make a huge amount on a playdate game, but let me tell you it has reinvigorated me, and I am now working on taking one of those title all the way to being a 3d rendered game in unreal engine.

And I think this is where it shines. It gets the creative juices flowing, and constrains you in a good way artistically. With the limits of the device, you focus 100% on fun engaging gameplay. And if you nail that bit, you can translate your game design into something more visually rich. If your idea doesn't end up being fun enough that you wanna keep playing it, then you bang out another idea. Kinda like how great artists just rough out ideas in a sketchbook.

To belabor things a bit more, this is I think what hurts game devs the most in the long term. They have an idea that seems great in their head, it takes 2-3 years to make it to a final product, and in the end it just isn't engaging, and then they leave a sad post on the gamedev forums about the fact that no one is playing their games.

Look at some of the best games out there: GTA, stardew valley, factorio, etc.

A watered down simple version of any of those games could be made and be fun on the playdate. If this was the first version of any of those games, players would be falling over themselves to buy it on the handheld, and with that marketability proven in a tiny area, a fully fleshed out version could be made.

So, if you have an idea kicking around, get a playdate, build the game, sell it and get feedback. I'd say if you make 100 sales on itch for a playdate game, you have a winner that you should build for real and sell on steam.