For those that doubted the power mobile platforms can have, Hardlight Studios has a bone to pick with you. Speaking with Joystiq, Chief Technical Officer Chris Southall is proud at the pace both Sonic Jump and Sonic Dash are downloaded and played daily.
According to Southall, Jump, which is a paid download, is currently at 8 million downloads while the speedy Dash, a free-to-play title, is currently zooming at 20 million downloads, with 1 million “Dash-ers” actively playing the game daily and an additional average of over 100,000 users adding the game to their devices for the first time.
“You can just see that Sonic is such a big IP; we haven’t actually done any advertising or user acquisition yet on Sonic Dash,” Southall said. “We’re doing updates through the year, we’re going to to keep doing that, and using the learning we’ve gained as a studio. And [we’re going to] start to actually advertise the game and push it more. So hopefully where we are now with Sonic Dash is kind of the beginning rather than the end.”
He finally teases that Hardlight Studios has already signed off on its next game, which will be using “a big SEGA IP” that isn’t Sonic. An open beta for the game is currently slated for early 2014.
Now more than ever will I repeat this: “Chao Game, F2P, mobile platforms. You’re welcome, Sega.”
16 Comments
Does that mean we will get a chao garden game for IOS? Where would the animals and chaos drives come from? Other sonic apps?
This just makes me depressed. It adds credence to developers simply reskinning popular franchises with existing games will create massive sales. It’s not a new concept, mind you, but it’s happening far too often on mobile.
As you said, it’s nothing new. This follow-the-leader idea has always been in the industry, hell, during humanity’s time in general.
I just hope this is just to build up small studios by doing derivative work until they feel more comfortable doing original work. So long as they don’t get stuck just copying ideas, it can be beneficial.
It would be nice if an update were done to Sonic Dash (or perhaps this could be done in the style of a new shop item) that made the characters differ from each other in stats and perks, but I’m not expecting it.
Also, I agree, GeneHF, a Chao game for mobile would be tight.
I’d rather have a Chao game without micro transactions.
I would rather have a chao game where you get the animals and chaos drives from apps like sonic dash and sonic jump! Then it could be like the SA2 chao garden. Maybe the animals could even come from taxman and stealth’s newest port, Sonic 1 2013.
See? Sega has a huge cash cow potential right here.
I don’t even care if I get a Special Thanks credit or not, the point is it makes so much sense to do it and has such a cash potential (ala Spiral Knights) that I’m baffled why it’s not a thing at all yet.
Blueblur, if you were trying to voice my feelings on the matter you would’ve hit the nail on the head with the wording of your comment. :+1:
Doesn’t Sonic Jump still have extra characters and levels locked away?
The real question is how many of those 20 million people are actually putting money into the game, and how much? Getting people to download something for free isn’t exactly a huge success story.
This is always a fun analytic to look at with F2P games since the average retention rate takes a massive dip after only a few minutes. If they’re boasting about it, those that are still keeping with the game (a million on average, according to them) are keeping the game healthy enough to be considered a success.
Actually, people pour a lot of money into F2P games. For example, Team Fortress 2 has been making Valve a lot more money as a F2P game than when it was a you had to pay for.
I’m not saying they can’t/don’t, I’m just curious as to the actual numbers involved, because they’re far more relevant than just the number of free downloads.
“Chao Game, F2P, mobile platforms. You’re welcome, Sega.”
Ditto this. It seems like the obvious thing to do for mobile, after all. I mean, I’d more likely play that than these other games…assuming I had a mobile.
This is great news, maybe this will motivate SEGA to release Sonic Dash for Android.
As for a Chao Garden for iOS, BAD IDEA, I love the Chao Garden and I want it within a Sonic game, not a standalone iOS crap.
Well then they could put it within Sonic Dash, Sonic Jump, Sonic 1, Sonic 2 after it’s remade, etc.