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100m Tetris sales for EA Mobile

Tim Green
100m Tetris sales for EA Mobile

It's a landmark to compare to Titanic movie grossing $1bn, says ecstatic publisher.

The iconic Russian puzzler, first developed in 1984, has now achieved 100m paid downloads across all mobile formats since EA bagged the mobile rights in 2005.

It was first made available for mobile by G-Mode in Japan in 2001, so the lifetime sales total is actually even greater than 100m.

Despite Tetris's veteran status it still sells 20m a year and 55,000 copies a day, and is the tenth biggest selling app on the Apple App Store this week.

It is currently available across 800 handsets, and via 300 distributors. 75 per cent of current sales are on feature phones, with the rest on smartphones including iPhone.

EA believes the evergreen appeal of Tetris, with a mathematical basis that transcends all cultural barriers, will propel it to further heights in future. It says it is working on a connected version of the title, but would not be drawn on details.

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The 100m figure puts a positive spin on EA's purchase of Jamdat for $680 million in 2005. Although Jamdat was an established publisher at the time, observers suggested that EA effectively paid the cash for one thing: Jamdat's rights to Tetris.

It seemed ambitious at the time; not any more. Although EA declined to say how much these 100m downloads had grossed, it's safe to assume Tetris/Jamdat was a good investment.

Adam Sussman, VP of worldwide publishing for EA Mobile, is confident Tetris will keep selling: "There are still 4.85bn people in the world without a mobile phone. We think there's lots of life left in the game," he said.

It's a view shared by Henk Rogers, CEO of Blue Planet Software (the company that manages the licensing rights to the Tetris game), who has been involved with the title  right from the start.

"In the early days you hoped your game would sell for three months! But we keep re-defining it to keep it relevant for new players."

 

Tags: Games , gaming , tetris , ea mobile