Plants vs. Zombies smashes iPhone records
By Jenny • Mar 1st, 2010 • Category: iPhone
- Photo: Apple
Casual games maker, Popcap, has continued to prove it’s capable of printing money at will by smashing the iPhone record for the fastest selling paid app in app store history, with over 300 000 titles moving in a mere nine days.
Inevitable success
- Photo: Apple
Plants vs. Zombies, which was released for PC and Mac in 2009, is a desktop tower defense game where you protect your house by lining your lawn with anti-zombie vegetation, which either shoots your enemies or protects your base. A pea transforms into a peashooter and an acorn is used as a path blocker zombies must first chew through to proceed. The title went on to become the fastest selling title in the history of Popcap, of Bejeweled fame.
At $1 (£0.64) per download on the app store, the company has reportedly earned over $1 million (£ 650 000) for releasing Plants vs. Zombies iPhone, which is essentially a port of a year-old game.
Not a single wrong step
- Photo: Popcap
Popcap simply cannot put a foot wrong, on PC or the app store. The company has achieved what many other video game developers strive for: traction within a female audience without unnecessarily dumbing down the experience too much for more core gamers. It’s also managed to achieve ubiquity and unbridled success across PC, Mac and the iPhone with a small retail presence, since it derives the bulk of its revenue from online sales. This, in turn, means Popcap get to keep more money than other developers who have to share a large chunk of their revenue with distribution and retail partners.
Even then, Popcap has just taken in a massive round of venture capital – which it did not need – so as to finance accelerated growth. Whatever that means, gamers can rest assured the company is due to churn out titles of Plants vs. Zombies ilk that are more addictive and fun than a video game should legally be allowed to be.
Tags for this article: Plants vs. Zombies, Popcap
