Smurfs' Village ousts Angry Birds as top grossing iPhone game
Smurfs' Village by Capcom has officially brought down Angry Birds from its ivory roost as the number one grossing game in Apple's App Store, Mashable reports. However, it becomes slightly less remarkable after looking at one simple fact: the game is 100 percent to download. But that doesn't explain how the game made so much cash so quickly.
Microtransactions. Now, that's a lot of smurfberries (the game's paid currency). They make the social game world go round on the web, and it looks like that rule still firmly applies to mobile social games. Like most social games, paying up in virtual currency--in this case smurfberries--speeds up the playing process (i.e. the growth of crops in this game) and can be bought in bushels of 50 for $4.99 to a wheelbarrow of one thousand for an insane $59.99.
However, Pocket Gamer's guess for the game's sudden growth spurt of money trees is due to kids making inadvertent purchases in the game--players can purchase anything they want for 15 minutes after the username and password is entered on the iPhone. If Pocket Gamer is right, it probably played out a little like this: Mom enters her credentials so that little Jimmy can get his Smurf on. Little Jimmy wants his crops faster and finds that he can buy these magical berries that will make them grow right now. Ignoring the foreign symbols we adults commonly know as dollar signs, Jimmy buys hundreds of dollars worth of smurfberries on Mom's credit card. And boom, Jimmy has the best Smurf farm in town, but Mom's credit card bill looks as if she put a down payment on a house... a Smurf house. Despite this hypothetical scenario, our guess as to how Smurfs' Village dethroned Angry Birds is as good as yours (and Pocket Gamer's). Unintentional or not, it looks like free-to-play, virtual goods-driven social gaming just became the de facto winner on iPhone.
Have you tried Smurfs' Village yet? What do you think of the game's nearly instant rise to the top? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.
