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Tapulous making a million a month off the App Store
Well, even with rampant piracy, review craziness, and that funky approval process, it's good to hear that someone can still make a truckload of cash on the App Store. According to Reuters, that someone is Tapulous, who is apparently making almost a million dollars a month thanks to twenty million downloads of their Tap Tap Revenge game. We recently talked to Andrew Lacy on the release of said game back in October, and he told us that the game's in-app purchase features (you get the game for cheap, and then have a chance to buy lots of extra music to play in packs and bundles) would be the "first big test of in-app commerce at a much grander scale." Looks like the test was a success. Of course, there's not too many details on how exactly that million dollars comes in -- I'm sure there was a flurry of sales right around the release of the app (as press was dropping), and you'd expect them to be a little higher during the holidays (sales of video games usually are, no matter what platform you're talking about). So it's not completely proven that this kind of income is necessarily sustainable. But still, it's good to hear from the folks at Tapulous that someone can release a game and roll in the cash from Apple's platform.
HTC reportedly moves a million Magic smartphones, boogies down at midnight
These days, the whole "I shipped a million!" claim is becoming more and more common, but it's still worth pointing out that HTC has managed to move a whole bundle of its Android-based myTouch 3G (or Magic, as it were) since debuting in April. Or, that's the story, anyway. According to a dangerously brief blurb over at Digitimes, the outfit's head honcho quipped that the Magic has "surpassed one million units," and he also noted that it would begin to focus more on the mid-range market as opposed to always dealing devices at the high-end. So, raise your glass high for this one folks, and let the countdown to a million Hero handsets begin while you're at it.[Via InformationWeek]
Free VidZone app passes one million downloads
Europe's exclusive music video service just surpassed one million downloads. VidZone is SCEE's music video service that streams music videos -- new and old -- for free on PS3 and PSP. In addition to an archive of classics, VidZone most recently debuted U2's latest single, "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," exclusively through the service.It's no wonder that VidZone has been popular amongst European PS3 owners considering its low cost of entry (free). The European PlayStation.Blog announced earlier today that "VidZone has had over 1 million downloads and 100 million video streams on PS3."We're certainly jealous of our friends across the Atlantic that can access the service. However, in spite of its success, it doesn't look like there are any plans (yet) to bring this service to the US. To see the top 10 videos on VidZone, click past the break.[Thanks, al thor!]
Estimates of 500K iPhone 3G S weekend sales too low by half
It's a good thing Gene Munster shaded his anticipatory numbers a bit over the weekend, otherwise he'd be in the market for a new crystal ball. As mentioned yesterday, the signs were pointing to a bigger opening weekend for the latest handset from Apple, and the results did not disappoint: in a company press release this morning, Apple announced sales of 'over a million' iPhone 3G S units through Sunday 6/21. Also noted in the brief release were the six million downloads of the iPhone 3.0 software update; no details on the number of iPod touch users who have also updated. In addition to the raw number -- impressive enough -- there are two other tidbits in this release that bear mentioning. One, it's got a quote from Steve Jobs; this reinforces the notion that El Jefe Esteban is on his way back to the iCEO seat on a more active basis, as reported in the Wall Street Journal on Friday. Two, it looks like bloggers and journalists aren't the only ones having a problem with the odd spacing on Apple's latest product name; the press release repeatedly refers to the new phone as the "iPhone 3GS." We feel your pain.[via AllThingsD]
Mog Bonanza numbers revealed, grand prize totals over 85 million gil
74 people just woke up today and nearly fainted at the keyboard when they logged into Final Fantasy XI. Yes, that's right, the Mog Bonanza numbers have been revealed, along with the grand total of all of the prizes.This year's lottery netted over 6,000,000 marbles sold across all of the FFXI servers, resulting in a grand total of over 12 billion (yes, billion with a B) gil being spent on the contest. As we stated earlier, the grand prizes of gil were influenced by the amount of gil in the contest, which resulted in some pretty intense amounts being offered to winners.In short, 74 people now have the ability to claim the grand prize of 85,738,149 gil from their local Mog Bonanza moogle. Interested in the other prize amounts and winning numbers? Read onwards and we'll spill all of the stats on the winners.
Over one million downloads for Stanford's iPhone dev course
Here's a telling sign of the popularity of iPhone development: we posted about an online course being offered by Stanford just a few months ago, and in that time, the course has been downloaded over a million times through iTunes. The director of iTunes U at Apple says this is the fastest any course has ever hit the million mark.Only those attending Stanford will get credit for completing the 10-week course, but the material is available to the public right there in iTunes. And of course there are lots of ways to learn how to make apps on the iPhone -- Auntie TUAW has answered that question, and we've even got an iPhone Dev 101 series to help you wrap your mind around all of it. The iPhone itself seems made for newbies, and considering that there's apparently lots of money to be had in Ye Olde App Store, it's no surprise that people are flocking in huge numbers to the documentation.Whether any of those apps are any good, of course, is still up in the air. But who knows -- someone who starts with the free iTunes U course might one day be a game-changing designer. There's got to be at least one winner in those million downloaders, right?
Nintendo consoles had 62 new million-selling titles in past fiscal year
A recent Nintendo financial statement/press release was chock full of goodies for those patient enough to dig through all the Bob-ombast. First was a mighty impressive sales figure -- over the past fiscal year, 62 games (first and third-party) which have been released on the Wii and DS reached one million copies sold life-to-date. This brings the total number of million-sellers on Nintendo's current batch of systems to 145. That's a large enough number, even when you don't multiply it by one million.Other interesting tidbits came in the release's solemn reflection over the past fiscal year, where Nintendo claims credit for the "Gaming Population Expansion." Also, the company lays out its plans for the future, explaining that it will continue "capitalizing on being the only hardware platform producer with powerful in-house software development teams." Oh, snap! Massive flame war imminent! Joystiq Thermo-Shield, engage!
There could be up to a million Chinese gold farmers
A new report on MMO gold farming claims that there are about 400,000 working in China on gold farming and trading, and that there could be as many as 500,000 to even a full million. Of course there's no way to tell exactly how many people are employed in the business (and the number almost certainly doesn't stay constant for long), but according to interviews and surveys done of business there, that's the number they've come up with. They also claim a $10 billion a year turnover, however, and that number seems way high, though remember that they're talking about all MMOs, not just World of Warcraft. The report has some other interesting information about how China does gold farming: there are a number of brokerages staffed by English speakers in the larger cities that handle the actual transaction, and then the farms themselves are usually outside the cities, where cheaper labor is available. Typical pay in the farms is about $140 a month plus food and board, working in about ten hour shifts, while pay is higher in the city-based brokerages. Most employees are younger guys, who play while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, and lots of their ingame tasks are automated with custom-made and adapted software.
Killzone 2 sells more than 1M copies worldwide
There's only one thing internet fanboys love debating as much as Killzone 2's graphical capabilities ("It's too brown!" "It's more real than real life!") -- and that's Killzone 2's sales numbers. SCEA has just announced that its flagship "only on PlayStation" game has sold over one million copies worldwide, making it "the biggest initial success at retail of any first-party PS3 title to date."It's taken Killzone 2 nearly seven weeks to reach the million milestone, and how that should be celebrated will largely depend on your loyalties. In comparison, Super Smash Bros. Brawl took a mere week to reach that magic number; Gears of War 2 managed to sell twice that much in its first week. Regardless, a million copies is nothing to scoff at -- we're certain these sales provided a nice injection of cash into the Sony war chest.
Study: MMOs bringing in $1.4 billion a year
If America's bankers want to get back into Moneytown, apparently they could do a lot worse than designing a hit MMO -- a study by a group named Screen Digest says that the MMO market is hotter than ever. After dropping down to a total of $701 million in 2008, games like World of Warcraft are seeing their revenues rise again, up to a total of $1.4 billion. And not surprisingly, WoW is still leading the charge -- while their overall market share is dropping very slightly, from 60% of the market down to around 58%, they're still making more money than ever. And while other games are picking up some numbers, according to Screen Digest, they're not really stealing players from Azeroth -- they're actually pulling new MMO players in.Which is understandable -- during times of economic downturn, online games like MMOs are actually positioned to do very well. Why spend $15 on one night at the movies when you can spend it on a whole month of entertainment? World of Warcraft may have brought the MMO monster to the surface, but according to numbers like these, this is a game genre that's going to be extremely popular (and profitable) for a long time to come.
Nintendo doubles up Sony's PSP, ships 100 millionth DS handheld
Nearly a month ago to the day, Sony triumphantly proclaimed that it had sold its 50 millionth PlayStation Portable. Now, Nintendo's making that figure look awfully small by shipping its 100 millionth DS handheld. The number includes original DS, DS Lite and DSi systems, and clearly, those sales are still going strong. The original DS launched way back in late 2004, while the totally hip DSi is slated to ship here in the United States in under a month. So, who's taking bets on how long it takes to hit the magical 200 million mark?
Kunio's Super Collection of Hot-Blooded Big Athletic Meet Screens
Would you like to know what the sports are in the new multi-event Kunio sports game? Of course you would! We're going to pretend that the cool reception that met Super Dodgeball Brawlers didn't happen, and the world is exhibiting the correct and expected frothing demand for a new Kunio sports game from Million.Three of the new sports look like a return to the events found in the first Famicom multievent game, Nekketsu Koushin Kyoku: Soreyuke Dai Undoukai: the obstacle course, in a room full of traps; the free-roaming triathlon that takes the kids through town, climbing buildings and crossing rivers; and, of course, the fighting tournament. New to the series is some kind of treasure-hunting game, in which players compete to hoard the most random junk. New screens of all of the games, highlighting the pretty unfortunate 3D, can be found at Famitsu.
Northrend's Gross Domestic Product: 719 million gold
Our friend The WoW Economist started a little project the other day: he added up, according to the top items lists, all of the products sold from Northrend across the servers, and then multiplied each by what he calls a "median" price (though exactly how that's reached, we're not sure), and landed on a huge amount of gold: 719,918,239.7. Obviously I'm not a WoW Economist (I'm not even that good at math), but that sounds to me like Northrend's gross domestic product: players are creating an economy of 719 million gold in Northrend from week to week.Unfortunately, that number alone doesn't tell us much, except that there's a lot of gold moving around in Northrend (it would be interesting to compare this to, say, Azeroth or Outland's equivalent, though the more useful numbers would probably be Outland before the new expansion hit, when everyone was still farming and selling items from there). And it will be interesting to see this tracked in the future: the real GDP is usually used as an indicator of both standard of living and a country's economic health, and while there are drawbacks to using that number to gauge both of those qualities, it's probably fair to say the economy in Northrend is booming. Maybe tracking this in the future will let us see how new content patches or item or even class updates can affect what the economy does there.Very interesting. EVE Online's creators, CCP, have actually hired an economist to help run their ingame economy, and while WoW's isn't generally seen as quite that complicated, there are still plenty of big numbers to play around with..
AT&T hits goal of one million U-verse TV subscribers
Just a day after announcing that U-verse TV was lit in select areas of Raleigh and Orlando, AT&T has reached its long-time goal of securing one million U-verse TV subscribers before the end of 2008. And yeah, the outfit's chief executive of telecom operations totally called this last week, but we're willing to bet he had access to some pretty confidential (and telling) figures. At any rate, the milestone has been hit less than 2.5 years after the service first launched, reaching some 79 major markets in 16 states. Kudos AT&T -- now how's about you get those expansion efforts moving forward at a frantic pace? You know you want two million by July.
Pokmon Platinum approaches, er, platinum status in Japan
See, the game has sold 967,675 copies in its first two days on Japanese store shelves, which is close to a million, which means that, if Pokémon Platinum were an American music album, it would almost be a platinum record. Once we realized that, the headline just wrote itself. As did this explanatory paragraph ...Look, Pokémon games are still popular in Japan, all right? That's all we're trying to say here! Sheesh! We need a drink.[Via DS Fanboy]
Activision doing well, Blizzard has spent $200M in upkeep on WoW
Activision Blizzard (the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment) held an Analyst's Day earlier this week (in which a bunch of stock analysts sit down to crunch numbers and predict the future), and they came out of it really well -- according to those in the know, Activision Blizzard is set to do very well in the future. Buoyed by Blizzard and their other big franchises (do we have to name them by now? Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, etc.), 99% of analysts give the stock a "Buy" or "Hold" rating, and many were impressed with what Activision told them about their releases in 2009.And we got another interesting insight into just what kind of money Blizzard is looking at -- they reported on the call that since 2004, they've spent $200 million on the upkeep of World of Warcraft alone. That includes things like payroll, customer support, and hardware updates, of which there have been plenty of those. $200 million does seem like a lot, but of course when you consider just how much revenue they've pulled in via subscriptions (ten million players paying up to $15 a month, though Blizzard has all kinds of different subscription plans around the world), $200 million over four years isn't all that much.We're told, though, that that money doesn't include any development costs (pre-release, and we're not sure if it includes patch/expansion development or not, either). And it certainly doesn't include Blizzard-wide costs, like their new HQ, or what they spend on advertising, promotion, and those big events held around the world. There's no question, however, that there's plenty of money coming both in and out of Blizzard's doors.
Funcom: WoW is McDonald's, AoC is steak
It's just in the nature of game developers to talk a little trash -- whenever you work on something for so long, you'll pretty much say whatever you can when someone asks you to compare your game to someone else's. So we'll forgive Funcom's Gaute Godager (game director of Age of Conan) for what he says about World of Warcraft in this Eurogamer interview.WoW comes up first at the beginning of the interview, and Godager gracefully accepts props for AoC having the biggest launch since World of Warcraft. Which is true -- AoC has shipped over a million copies since launch (though Warcraft has gone on to sell nine million more, and AoC hasn't quite gotten there yet). But at the end of the interview, Godager really brings out the big guns -- he says that playing WoW is fun and all, but "if you've been to McDonald's for four or five years, and had your burger and your coke, sometimes it's great to just have a great steak and a glass of good wine."Apparently Age of Conan is supposed to be that steak, and our little critically acclaimed and history-making game is supposed to be the culinary equivalent of McDonald's. Which isn't a bad comparison -- we can definitely see Age of Conan being called "steak." Especially since it was served so undercooked.
Aksys Q&A: Dodgeballs and Detectives
It seems like only a few days ago when publisher Aksys Games announced that it would be localizing Super Dodgeball Brawlers and Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles (Tantei Jinguji Saburo), much to our delight. Though both titles have been met with mixed reviews, we can't help but be thankful that someone took the risk to bring over these titles that likely would have stayed in Japan otherwise.With both Super Dodgeball Brawlers and Jake Hunter now on store shelves, we chatted with the studio's localization crew -- associate producer Mike Manzanares, assistant associate producer Frank deWindt, and marketing director Gail Salamanca -- about the two titles and Aksys's future. Jump past the break for details on Super Dodgeball Brawlers' unlockables and Jake Hunter's abridged case load!
Undodgeable SDB screens from U.S., Korean releases
North American publisher Aksys has accompanied Super Dodgeball Brawlers' stateside release this week with an image bonanza of (Japanese) screenshots, character art, and other promotional assets, all of which we've conveniently collected for you in the gallery below.Apparently, lots of people are having trouble finding the game in stores, so here's an opportunity for you to flip past the screenshots quickly to approximate an animated match, imagining that you're really playing the game. We had no problem finding Super Dodgeball Brawlers ourselves, as most of the GameStops around our area kept two copies on their shelves.In related news, Fujitsu also plans to ship Super Dodgeball Brawlers to stores in Korea next week and has released a huge, 80-image-strong batch of Korean-translated screens, which, for some reason, includes shots from the staff credits and celebration scene that appears after a completed tournament. Perhaps they were accidentally released in Fujitsu's rush to get the word out -- the word(s) being "Kunio in Korea!"%Gallery-14440%
Super Dodge Ball gets super remix
Before we go into fits induced by the awesome fact that Super Dodgeball Brawlers is releasing in a mere two weeks, we figured that the least we could do is spread some love for an aspect of the original game that's often ignored -- its music.Of course, the best thing to do with great video game music is remix it, and The Bad Dudes have done just that. Taking Kazuo Sawa's score from the original Super Dodge Ball (NES) and arranging it with some ethnic flavor (based on the different teams' countries of origin) makes for a great combination. Don't just take out word for it, though -- give it a listen or download the zip file over at No Balls, No Glory.Aksys also plans to use this EP to promote the upcoming DS remake, which is set to hit American stores on May 27th.[Via Destructoid]
