Christmas Brings a Hefty Gift for OpenFeint: Mobile Gaming on the Rise
As usual, this holiday season also brought good news to mobile gaming, and experienced a spike in mobile app downloads. Besides all others, mobile social gaming platform Openfeint reported some great figures as it added 4,50,000 new users just on Christmas Day. This is an increase of nearly 184% on a daily average, and has hit the record of highest users in a single day.
Openfeint got a total of 1.4 million new users during the 4-day holiday stretch. Its users downloaded over 5 million OpenFeint enabled games during this period. In total, it has added 88% more users than last year. Android download increased by 73 percent, and iOS downloads were up by 187 percent. The reported numbers are pretty amazing, even in a relatively new industry.
Wondering on what caused so much growth, we found that it was in part due to OpenFeint’s cross-platform approach with its social gaming platform. It first launched them on iPhone and iPad followed by adding Android game developers to its community. Now, it is also looking to expand beyond iOS and Android platforms.
As more and more mobile gaming platforms are swift on expansion, OpenFeint is also coming up on the scene. In fact, it has managed to attract several online gamers over Apple, which has lacked its own social platform. OpenFeint’s games are running well on Android platforms too, taking 4 out of 8 games on Android Market’s top 15 selling apps. Out of these, Fruit Ninja and MiniSquadron have taken their place as the top two ranked games respectively, and that’s only within 72 hours after launching in the Market!
“The past two weeks have proved to us that Android users are hungry for great games – and they’re willing to pay for top quality content. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to roll out games and help establish the paid gaming market on Android,” said CEO Jason Citron of Aurora Feint, makers of OpenFeint. “We couldn’t be more excited about this latest Android release.”
Just last month, OpenFeint raised the funding of $3 million from Intel Capital and $5 million from China-based The9. Now, the company’s total funding has become $12 million. This is truly indicative of where the mobile game space is headed for 2011, and things are looking good for cross-platform networks as the mobile consumer scene becomes more diverse.
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