The runaway success of an iPhone game created by two brothers on a laptop is pressuring video-game makers Square Enix Holdings Co and Capcom Co to reboot their strategies and appeal to mainstream players.
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ew York-based Lima Sky struck gold with “Doodle Jump,” a game downloaded 4.7 million times from Apple Inc’s iTunes Store, ranking No. 4 among the top 100 paid applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The 99-cent game has more than 170,000 Facebook followers.
Making hit games for Apple’s mobile devices has proven difficult for major Japanese publishers, which typically devote millions of dollars, large creative teams and several years to develop games. Square Enix has no entries in Apple’s top 100, while Capcom’s 99-cent quiz game ranks 98th. Activision Blizzard Inc., the world’s largest video-game publisher, has two.
“The success of Apple’s devices is the biggest source of concern in our packaged-software business,” Haruhiro Tsujimoto, president of Capcom, Japan’s fifth-largest game maker, said in an interview.
“Demand for the iPhone has spread to the casual user demographic, a trend likely to be amplified with iPad’s release, making it a gaming platform in its own right and a market that cannot be ignored.”
The top-selling paid application in the iTunes Store is the 99-cent “Angry Birds” by Rovio Mobile Ltd., a Helsinki-based developer with 17 employees.
New iPhone
The iPhone and iPod Touch captured 5 percent, or about $500 million, of the U.S. video-game software market last year, a five-fold increase from a year earlier, according to San Francisco-based researcher Flurry. Application sales may exceed the equivalent of $760 million this year, according to a report by Tokyo-based researcher Enterbrain Inc.
The new iPhone going on sale later this month features a higher-resolution screen, faster processor and more sensitive motion-control mechanism, making it better for games.
Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs earlier this week forecast that global sales of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad will reach 100 million units this month, overtaking Nintendo Co.’s Wii console and exceeding the combined sales of Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 gaming systems.
The average price of an application on Apple’s platform is $2.90, according to Scottsdale, Arizona-based In-Stat LLC. That compares with about $60 for a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 game and $35 for a Nintendo DS handheld game.
‘Doodle’ Brothers
Igor Pusenjak, 34, created “Doodle Jump” while teaching part-time at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. His brother, Marko, 32, handled programming on a laptop. They formed Lima Sky in 2008 and released the game in April 2009.