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Pocket God and Flight Control made headlines after surpassing two million sales units over the past week, and the free-to-play action game Waterslide Extreme has just celebrated a milestone of its own. Waterslide Extreme has now been downloaded more than 10 million times since its launch in July of last year.

Waterslide Extreme earned more than two million downloads in its first week of release, and topped Apple’s free app charts in 19 countries. The game, in which players tilt the accelerometer to descend a series of twisting 3D waterslides, was developed by Fishlabs to tie in with an advertising campaign for the UK credit company Barclaycard.

Waterslide Extreme saw a recent boost in popularity over the holiday season, which brought in another one million downloads from new iPhone and iPod Touch owners. After returning to the U.S. free app charts, the app now averages 40,000 downloads per day.

Fishlabs claims that Waterslide Extreme “may be the most internationally successful ad game in the App Store,” with players contributing to an average brand engagement period of 100 million minutes in the app’s first six months of release.

Tags: app store, barclaycard, dare digital, fishlabs, sales data, waterslide extreme

Apple’s quarterly profits rose nearly 50 percent on revenue growth of 32 percent year-over-year, as iPhone sales doubled over the same quarter in the previous year.

In fiscal Q1 2010, which ended December 26, 2009, Apple’s profits hit $3.38 billion, from $2.26 billion in Q1 2009, and its revenue climbed to $15.68 billion from $11.88 billion.

Part of that can be pinned on a surge in iPhone sales. The company sold 8.7 million units of the phone and entertainment/gaming device in Q1, up 102 percent from 4.3 million units the previous year.

The iPhone may be partially cannibalizing sales of its less-multitasking iPod cousin, however: iPod sales actually declined 7.5 percent year-over-year, from 22.7 million units to a still-substantial 21 million.

Overall, iPhone and iPod unit sales combined were up 10 percent, with the company’s game-dominated App Store continuing to surge in popularity. Bolt Creative’s Pocket God has just become the first App to sell 2 million units.

Apple saw a more clear-cut boost in sales of its pricier Mac laptops, which rose 33 percent from 2.5 million to 3.36 million. The company also realized a relative financial gain by changing how it records iPhone sales: it now books that revenue up front, while it previously deferred it over the device’s projected lifetime.

The results, which beat Wall Street’s expectations of roughly flat revenue, come just days before Apple is expected to announce its next major product: a portable tablet computing device.

[This news item was written by Chris Remo and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

Tags: Apple, Industry News, iPhone, sales data

After reaching one million units sold in June of last year, Firemint’s air traffic control simulation title Flight Control has reached another sales milestone. Firemint reports that the title has now sold more than two million units worldwide.

Firemint’s report arrives less than a week after developer Bolt Creative announced that its casual entertainment title Pocket God surpassed two million units in sales, becoming the first application in the iTunes App Store to do so.

Firemint notes that Flight Control achieved its sales target in less than a year, after launching in March of 2009. According to data released by the developer, Flight Control saw its biggest sales after its initial release, with an additional sales spike occurring in June after a content-expanding update.

Flight Control recently saw another rise in popularity over Christmas, though additional feature updates have not coincided with noticeable sales increases.

Tags: firemint, flight control, Industry News, sales data

Namco Bandai is yet another packaged goods publisher that is trying to make more headway in non-traditional digital markets such as social networks and digital downloads.

On Monday, U.S.-based Namco Networks said that it surpassed 23 million downloads on Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Namco Networks said it is averaging 36,450 downloads per day since the App Store’s opening in June 2008. A rep for Namco Networks told us that the total download amount includes both free and paid downloads, although the company did not immediately have a ratio at hand.

Namco has partially relied on popular franchises born in the arcade and home consoles in order to gain a foothold in digital markets, with App Store renditions of Pac-Man, Mr. Driller, Galaga and Ace Combat. The company has also released new properties such as Garters & Ghouls and Isaac Newton’s Gravity on the App Store.

The firm expects to continue its expansion into the App Store market with 20 more games to launch on the service this year. “With over 100,000 applications available and three billion downloaded apps, the App Store is booming,” said Jonathan Kromrey, general manager of Apple Games for Namco Networks.

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Tags: namco bandai, sales data

Snappy Touch founder Noel Llopis has charted the lifetime sales of his iPhone gardening sim Flower Garden, revealing a number of interesting details about the App Store marketplace and documenting the effectiveness of in-app purchases.

Describing Flower Garden as “a strange in-between app,” Llopis notes that Flower Garden was far from being what he would consider a major success. At the same time, however, Llopis estimates that his game earned more money than 99 percent of the apps currently available in the App Store.

In its first 10 months of release, Flower Garden earned just over $21,500 — enough to “barely” support a living for a single person, Llopis estimates. After a strong debut boosted by media coverage and Apple recognition, though, Flower Garden was earning less than $100 per day. Llopis then explored other tactics to increase his daily revenue.

In an attempt to drum up sales for Mother’s Day, Llopis temporarily dropped the price of Flower Garden…and suffered a loss of revenue as a result. “”Lesson learned,” Llopis warns. “Don’t make a sale unless your app is in a visible position (on a top chart somewhere). Flower Garden was nowhere to be seen, so the sale had no effect other than to cut profits by 33%.”

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Tags: flower garden, noel llopis, sales data, snappy touch

iPhone developer Tapulous announced that its Tap Tap Revenge rhythm franchise generates nearly $1 million in monthly revenue.

Citing data collected by research firm ComScore, Tapulous reports that the Tap Tap Revenge games have been downloaded more than 20 million times since the release of the original Tap Tap Revenge in July of 2008.

Since then, the company has launched the sequels Tap Tap Revenge 2 and 3, along with band-specific releases like Metallica Revenge and Lady Gaga Revenge.

While previous Tap Tap Revenge games were free-to-play, Tap Tap Revenge 3, released in October, was the first in the series to be released as a paid download. Tap Tap Revenge 3 features a wide variety of songs from a number of artists, all of which may be purchased for play from an in-app store. Tapulous also earns revenue from in-game advertising in its free releases.

Over 600 million levels of Tap Tap Revenge have been played across all versions to date. Tapulous notes that over 33 percent of iTunes App Store customers have played one of its games.

Tags: Industry News, Music, rhythm, sales data, tap tap revenge, tapulous

iPhone application developer and publisher Amplified Games has revealed that it earns an average of $9,600 in monthly revenue from advertisements in its free-to-play iPhone games.

Amplified Games was one of the first publishers in Apple’s App Store to experiment with ad-supported software. The company released its debut title, Cookie Bonus Solitaire, shortly after the App Store launched in June of 2008, and followed up with Fat-Free Video Poker a month later. Both games include occasional advertisements served by iPhone ad network Greystripe.

Since then, Amplified has earned an average global eCPM of $2.45 from advertisements in its free-to-play games. The publisher averages $9,602 in montly ad revenue, and generated a total of $53,134 in its best month to date.

These numbers are atypical for the crowded iPhone app market, which often finds developers struggling to earn enough revenue to justify development costs. App Store publishers traditionally drop prices and release free trial versions of software in attempts to increase exposure and spur sales, rather than rely on advertising revenue.

Amplified has also released ad-free versions of its two games, available in the App Store for $2.99 each. The ad-supported versions of Cookie Bonus Solitaire and Fat-Free Video Poker remain significantly more popular than the paid editions, as indicated by each title’s quantity of App Store customer ratings.

“Our decision to create a free version of [Cookie Bonus Solitaire] really paid off in terms of driving consumer adoption and generating revenue,” said Amplified Games CEO Tom Hubina. “We’ve been with Greystripe for over a year and they are the best ad network to work with hands down.”

Tags: amplified games, app store, Apple, cookie bonus solitaire, in-game advertising, sales data

[The following news item was written by Simon Carless and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

Real Racing and Flight Control creator Firemint, 35 staffers strong, has made the successful transition from a work-for hire studio into a predominantly self-publishing iPhone developer, and studio head Rob Murray recently discussed his studio’s experiences.

The drive down to the 99c price point on the iPhone App Store may have been “somewhat altered” by the top-grossing list Apple has added, Murray suggested – but “the pressure is still there”, and marketing your company and game is key.

Flight Control was first billed as “from the creators of Real Racing“, and yet morphed into unexpectedly massive success, said Murray. Three weeks after launch, the game really took off, after it was featured by Apple and had been popularized via review sites and Twitter.

Firemint’s 99c iPhone game has now sold 1.5 million units worldwide, has hit #1 in at least 20 countries, and is one of the most popular games by number of paid downloads, according to Murray.

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Tags: firemint, flight control, Industry News, sales data

[The following was originally written by Kris Graft at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

As social game developer SGN announced a roster of new hires, the company also confirmed that to date it has sold 400,000 units of the air combat game F.A.S.T. on iPhone.

The game, whose title is short for Fleet Air Superiority Training, launched on June 7 this year, and currently sells for 99 cents. The game particularly takes advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer, allowing players to tilt the iPhone or iPod Touch to control jets engaged in air dogfights. The game earned strong reviews from enthusiast press.

SGN, short for Social Gaming Network, is also behind Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo games such as (fluff)Friends, iBaseball, and iBowling. The company claims that “at least one SGN game has been downloaded on a third of all iPhone and iPod touch devices in existence.”

The game maker, founded in March 2008, also said that it has hired a slate of new employees, all vets of the video games industry. The top hire is Randy Breen, who is now serving as SGN’s COO. Breen was with EA pre-IPO, SGN said, joining the company in 1986 when there were just 100 employees. He also worked at LucasArts and Emotiv Systems’ chief product officer.

Another new SGN hire is Randy Angle, who will lead development of SGN’s games. Angle is credited in games including Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Blood Wake.

Other hires include art director Margaret Foley-Mauvais (formerly EA), executive producer Dan Brazelton (ex-Crystal Dynamics, Total Entertainment Networks), and director of global communications Adriana Gascoigne (ex-hi5).

Additional recent hires include CTO Eric Huynh (ex-Vivendi Games) and chief creative officer Eric Lindstrom (ex-Crystal Dynamics).

SGN said its current iPhone game library has seen over 13 million unique downloads.

SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar said he hopes the new hires will help “capitalize on [SGN's] position within the booming social gaming industry.”

Tags: f.a.s.t., flight sim, sales data, sgn, social gaming network

Bolt Creative, developer of the episodic island life simulation title Pocket God, has disclosed the results of a user statistics tracking campaign, originally launched in April.

Bolt Creative’s stats reveal that over 50% of its users play Pocket God on an iPod Touch. The developer notes that iPod Touch users typically account for an average of 30% of sales for other applications, and claims that Pocket God has attracted twice as many iPod Touch users as the majority of games available in the iTunes App Store.

Pocket God’s user statistics also show that the frequently updated application has been opened more than 50 million times by approximately 1.5 million unique users since its debut in January of this year.

Pocket God co-creator Dave Castelnuovo notes that Pocket God continues to see thousands of unique users on a daily basis. “Astonishingly, we’ve seen quite a few days like September 3rd,” he says, “where 8,400 unique users launched the game over 352,000 times – an average of 41 sessions per user in a single 24-hour period.”

Tags: episodic, iPod Touch, pocket god, sales data, simulation, statistics