Shadow Era physical cards now being shipped to retail stores

Shadow Era is an iOS app that came out a long time ago -- it successfully combines a collectible card game (fairly similar to the World of Warcraft card game, if you've ever played that one) with a freemium business model, a plan that has worked out very well for developer Kyle Pool. So well, in fact, that he announced a little while ago that Shadow Era would be getting physical cards to go along with the iOS title, and indeed, the company has announced that Call of the Crystals, the first physical version of the original iOS title, is now headed to a game retail store near you.

You can see unboxing videos floating around already -- this is a full, high quality collectible card game that originally began only on Apple's iOS platform. That's great. Apple usually brags about how much software it has seen released on its iOS, but when you look at things like all of those Angry Birds collectibles and then a game like this, that has gone from an indie developer's idea to a full franchise, it's really fascinating to see just how popular and powerful this App Store has become.