UPDATED 16:42 EST / JANUARY 14 2014

NEWS

Play games and eat pizza! Pizza Hut made $1 Million in 4 months through Xbox 360 app

Who will be surprised to learn that game players are also lovers of pizzas? Know your audience is the first marketing rule. The fast-food chain Pizza Hut had recognized this a year back when it launched an app on Xbox 360 that allowed players to place orders directly from the console. Just after two quarters that app brought the pizza delivery company over a million dollars.

The application for the old Microsoft console was launched in mid-2013 and has been an incredible growth for the franchise. The public relations director for Pizza Hut Doug Terfehr, in an interview with Polygon, acknowledged that the online gaming platform has been a source of unbelievable growth for Pizza Hut.

“It’s been a source of unbelievable growth for us,” said Terfehr. “Just the explosion of people who wanted to download it, experiment with it, play with it with Kinect. As soon as we did one, everyone was contacting us to do the next [one].”

A spokesman for Yum Foods, the parent company of Pizza Hut, confirmed the statistics to Mashable, adding that the use of the application has been stable. As expected, more orders were placed at the end of the week. He also said that 11% of those who ordered from the Xbox 360 app were ordering from Pizza Hut’s online services the first time.

The app gave the players the option of ordering pizza from nearest pizza restaurant they wanted, or do so using their control or even Kinect. Players can build their own customized pizzas and place orders via Kinect motion controls, voice commands or the controller. Users can also link their Xbox and PizzaHut.com accounts and save their order settings to streamline future purchases, as well as view and take advantage of deals at local stores.

“We’re always looking at ways to give our audience more of what they’re interested in,” said Microsoft’s Larry Hryb when the app launched. “If you look at our audience, they love pizza. I mean, who doesn’t? It has international appeal, and Pizza Hut is a recognized brand that matches up well with the Xbox brand.”

Whether Pizza Hut is already working on apps for other consoles like Xbox One, PS4 or Wii U, is still not clear at the present time. At present, Terfehr said Pizza Hut is focusing on improving its iOS and Android apps to match the experience on Xbox. In any case, one can expect that numerous imitators will follow the suit after the great success of Pizza Hut.


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