Super Monkey Ball Developer Creates Dedicated iPhone Division
posted by arn on July 18th, 2008 10:41 AM EDT in News
Other Ocean, the developers of the iPhone version of Super Monkey Ball [App Store], have announced that they have created a specialized iPhone division to dedicate resources for future iPhone development:
"Our experience working with Apple's SDK has been extremely positive and the iPhone, with its accelerometer opens up exciting opportunities for game development on this platform," explained Gordon Wood, Other Ocean's technical directory and senior programmer. "The iPhone platform has generated a lot of attention and people are excited for the opportunities that lie ahead."
With Super Monkey Ball being the most popular paid application on the iTunes App Store, it's no wonder the company is going to dedicate more resources to it. Early numbers from the App Store showed that Super Monkey Ball earned over $27,000 in the first few hours of the App Store opening. This was before the iPhone 3G came out or the 2.0 Firmware was officially released.
Since then, Medialets as performed some fuzzy math to estimate Other Ocean's revenues to be in the millions of dollars since launch. Based on the early numbers quoted above and the persistent #1 spot, despite the fuzzy math, I think they are in the right ballpark.
Granted, Super Monkey Ball received more press than any other application in the App Store, it still shows the massive earnings potential with the App Store.
Update: An article with some comments from Other Ocean about their iPhone success.
And all that despite the fact SMB is not really that great.
Well, it's good of course, but I've enjoyed other games on there more – even a couple of free ones (Tap Tap).
I'd love to know how others did who where not part of the hot picks. I am considering a focused development process for iPhone – but just wondering how the average game is doing. Super Monkey Ball was a star, but how about the classic games like Scrabble and Solitaire how did they do?
Yeah. It's pretty good but I'm hoping they release an update to where I can change the sensitivity or something to help me play better. I still find this game pretty difficult but it's still fun.
About 12 hours after launch in New Zealand/Australia they were up to almost 11k downloads. The US market hadn't even hit at that point other than the people who had downloaded the 2.0 update through the leak. I don't know if they've made millions in one week, but I would say that they will very comfortably make $2-3M in profit by end of month. EASILY.
Agree with Adisah in that the controls are FAR too sensitive for this game to be truly complete. Wish I'd grabbed Crash 3D instead…
But good to see the App store making a lot of money for developers- hope it means more games- good ones
The controls are very sensitive but it would be a little too easy if they weren't.
I'm on the final island albeit stuck!! It would be nice if they had the option to alter the sensitivity though so other people could play it how they want too.
One more thing… It sorely needs some kind of 'Save' function. The game was designed for a phone but it doesn't save your progress if you get a call!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CRAZYTOWN!