Record-setting performance by five new Digital Chocolate games is establishing an original kind of "impulse" game that is reaching a vast new audience on platforms like the iPhone, Digital Chocolate, a quality leader in mobile gaming, announced today.
Three consecutive game releases -- Crazy Penguin Catapult, Tower Bloxx, and Brick Breaker Revolution -- have attracted a new category of gamers whose enthusiasm for these new kinds of games has propelled each of the Digital Chocolate offerings to the number one overall app download rank on the Apple App Store since January. And, despite being live on the App Store for less than 100 days, Digital Chocolate's five games - available in both free and premium versions - have been downloaded more than 8,000,000 times.
"Based on the app downloads chart they just showed this week, we have represented two percent of all downloads of all kinds since we made our debut," said Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate. "The unprecedented and record-setting aspects of our performance suggest that something big is going on."
In celebration of its success, all five Digital Chocolate games are on sale for $2.99 each through the end of March 2009.
Consumers Votes Affirm Digital Chocolate Popularity
All five Digital Chocolate games now rank in the Top 90 of All Free Games on the App Store. "This is remarkable considering that Apple just disclosed that there are 25,000 apps, many of which are free," added Hawkins. In addition, Crazy Penguin Catapult has been reviewed by more than 140,000 people that have downloaded it, making it the most reviewed app in the history of the App Store - including over 37,000 five-star reviews for just this game. Overall, Digital Chocolate games have received more than 200,000 consumer reviews - a number comparable to the population of Orlando or Salt Lake City.
"Apple is showing many industries how the world can take computers, content, community, and retailing to a new level," explained Hawkins. "If I brought a man from Mars down to Earth and showed him a Wal-Mart, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the on-device iPhone App Store experience, which do you think he would find the most amazing?
"This merchandising model on a mobile device is the wave of the future and will someday be used by billions of people. For consumers, this experience is well beyond what the writers of Star Trek came up with when given thousands of years to imagine. It is arguably the greatest achievement in the history of human commerce," he continued.
The Rise of Omni Media
Hawkins points out the iPhone App Store is another example that people have now become comfortable with computers and that well-crafted user experiences and extreme convenience will make people consume like never before. Recent years have seen an explosion in all forms of casual, interactive digital media, a trend that Digital Chocolate calls, "Omni Media" because of the sudden ubiquity of these media. TV viewers use texting features on their phones to cast votes, social network memberships are surging and simple games like Guitar Hero or Wii have become ‘instant parties.' Over a billion people are texting, browsing, and doing email and billions more are carrying phones as powerful as small computers ("social computers" as Hawkins calls them).
Digital Chocolate Quality Tradition Extending to New Platform
Quality and originality appear to be the key factors for iPhone customers and this seems to be driving success for Digital Chocolate. All five of the company's paid versions for the iPhone are monetizing well, according to the company, showing on the front pages of various charts, and getting the highest average consumer review scores compared to other publishers of multiple games.
The company paved the way for this success with its founding commitment to one-tap games that enable customers to "Seize the Minute," Digital Chocolate's long-standing slogan. Winning the most awards for mobile games in the last few years, Digital Chocolate has built a strong game catalog that is perfectly tuned to the emerging Omni audience. In the last year alone, Digital Chocolate has launched 28 major new games on new platforms that have either won awards or gone on to become Top 10 selling games on major mobile channels. In 2008, the company rolled out free web versions of many of its games and delivered more than 100,000,000 free game sessions, which further lifted its brand profile and set the stage for emergence on new platforms that are reaching the Omni consumer.
"Tower Bloxx is well on its way to becoming a cross-platform classic like Bejeweled," noted Hawkins. "It has now been a huge hit, won awards, and received rave reviews from both critics and consumers on numerous platforms, including Java phones, BREW phones, the web, Facebook, MySpace and now the iPhone.
"And when you see the global mobile market heading towards 5 billion handsets, and Apple only scratching the surface so far with 30 million devices, you have to get very excited about our future as an industry," he concluded.
About Digital Chocolate
Digital Chocolate is one of the world's most efficient producers of high quality, original games across mass-market casual platforms. With offices in San Mateo, Helsinki, Bangalore, and Barcelona, the company offers more than 60 award-winning games, including Tower Bloxx and AvaPeeps, with a focus on casual, social, and mobile play that is offered globally over both wired and wireless networks. Digital Chocolate was founded in 2003 by CEO Trip Hawkins, who was also the founder and CEO of Electronic Arts. In addition to leading the industry in awards for its mobile games, the company known as "DChoc" has itself won more than 10 awards in the last two years including Best Game Developer of the Year awards from both IGN.com and Mobile Entertainment and inclusion in The Red Herring Global 100. For more information, please visit www.digitalchocolate.com/iphone.
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