Talk about some serious monkey business. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sega's debut effort on the iPhone App Store, Super Monkey Ball, has racked up 300,000 downloads since it debuted on the service June 11.
At $9.99 a pop, that means the game has brought in just about $3 million for Sega, with Apple taking its 30% "upkeep" share off the top to the tune of $899k. Both parties must be quite pleased. Sega certainly is. Based on what SOA prez Simon Jeffery told the WSJ, the future looks to be full of iPhone games from the publisher. Speaking on the sizable sales of SMB, Jeffrey said, "That's a substantial business," adding, "It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform."
It's worth noting that these purchases, unlike those via XBLA or PSN, were made sight-unseen, as the App Store does not offer a SMB trial version. Now, if Sega would just release a patch to allow calibration of the iPhone's accelerometer so we can play SMB without staring straight down at it ... that'd be bananas.
Reader Comments (7)
Posted: Aug 12th 2008 5:11AM (Unverified) said
The games pretty annoying, not only do you have to be completely level (hard to do while commuting) but there also doesn't seem to be a save feature. I keep having to restart from lvl one.
Anyway, I'm REALLY hoping to see a Chu-Chu Rocket from Sega. That game was made for touch screens.
Anyway, I'm REALLY hoping to see a Chu-Chu Rocket from Sega. That game was made for touch screens.
Posted: Aug 12th 2008 8:03AM joshaimm said
I bought the game when it came out and yes it was difficult to control at first but you learn that the center of gravity is slightly tilted towards yourself and to use very small motions. Also there is a save feature: after every 10 levels it saves your progress. I beat the game and the levels get insanely hard by the last two worlds.
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Posted: Aug 12th 2008 8:18AM (Unverified) said
I-Phone is the next Game Gear/Nomad?
Posted: Aug 12th 2008 11:17AM FredFredrickson said
...or N-Gage? XD
Seriously though - didn't all the reporters say that SMB on the iPhone was a huge step forward? If that's a screen of it above, I think it looks like crap.
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Seriously though - didn't all the reporters say that SMB on the iPhone was a huge step forward? If that's a screen of it above, I think it looks like crap.
Posted: Aug 12th 2008 10:52AM Odog4ever said
As more and more time passes I begin to realize that SEGA has no intention on fixing SMB for the iPhone. The are a small percentage of players that have "adapted" to the crappy control scheme but the majority of their customers just have a pricey tech demo that they only played once. Most of the reviews in iTunes complain about the controls and the lack saved process (10 levels is way to long for a mobile game) I've already had one iPhone game get patched to add new features why won't SEGA do it? Are they that out of touch?
Posted: Aug 12th 2008 12:26PM (Unverified) said
Well if there's something able for playing games, your bet your ass Sega is going to be the first one to support it.
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