4 million downloads from Ovi Store for Digital Chocolate

Published by Rafe Blandford at 14:23 UTC, April 7th 2010

Digital Chocolate, a well known mobile and web games developer, has announced that its products have been downloaded from the Ovi Store more than 4 million times. To celebrate the announcement Digital Chocolate is, in a limited number of European countries, making five of its game titles available for free via the Ovi Store during April and May (variants of Tower Bloxx, Rollercoaster Rush, Crazy Penguin Party and Dictator Defense). Read on for further details and links.

"We are excited about the continuous growth of the Ovi Store, and the opportunities it creates for global mass-market content distribution,” said Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate. “Digital Chocolate will also be working to provide more value to consumers, and introducing innovative new ways to monetize on Nokia’s Ovi Store."

"Digital Chocolate makes highly addictive games that play very well across a wide range of Nokia devices, allowing Digital Chocolate to reach millions of users thanks to the worldwide reach of Ovi Store, currently having registered users from over 180 countries,” said Marco Argenti, VP and Global Head of Media, Nokia. “Gaming is one of the strongest content categories in most of our markets, and as Ovi Store’s selection continues to grow and we add more Digital Chocolate franchises, we’ll further democratize games and mobile applications for Nokia users around the world."

Digital Chocolate currently has 69 items in the Ovi Store; half of these are demo versions and a few have multiple entries (for different device types). This means there are about 30 different games from Digital Chocolate in the Ovi Store or around 130,000 download per game (although the downloads are very unlikely to be uniformly spread). 4 million downloads, even allowing for multiple games and the boost in numbers provided by demo versions, is a significant achievement. It shows that Ovi Store's quiet growth is continuing even as it faces recurring criticism from some quarters.

However more interesting is Digital Chocolate's commitment to undertake a related marketing campaign, which suggests that their own experience has led them to believe there is significant commercial potential in the Ovi Store.

"Digital Chocolate will support the campaign with a web initiative by creating a new Ovi customized online teaser of three of the campaign games. These web versions are available to play for free across numerous casual gaming sites on the web, and will feature Ovi Store links to direct the qualified game player audience to the Ovi Store offering a variety of mobile games. The viral web campaign will also reach across Digital Chocolate’s other web games, and Facebook version of Tower Bloxx, which has been played by millions of Facebook users."

By leveraging the reach of their non-mobile distribution channels Digital Chocolate will be able to deliver more people to its Ovi Store games. Generally, consumers generally expect web based games to be free, but are willing to pay a fee to continuing playing their favourite games on their mobile device.

This web-to-mobile monetisation strategy could become a popular business model for mobile gaming in the future. It is one way of solving the discovery problem app stores (how do you get people to find your game in a crowded app store?). The idea is already popular for iPhone games and Nokia showcased a similar strategy in its Reset Generation title.
 

Game Giveaway

The five games included in the free give away are Tower Bloxx™: New York, Rollercoaster Rush™ Revolution 99 Tracks, Crazy Penguin Party™, Nightclub Fever, and Dictator Defense™. They are currently priced at £3 or £4.

The free games have been made available for free via Ovi Store. All the games are "optimized for a range of Nokia handsets, including the Nokia N97 mini and Nokia X6".

The give away only includes select European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Of course you're wrong. In fact, you're also an idiot. First of all, what you are saying is totally untrue and complete bullshit. Ovi Store works just fine. Have you even tried it lately? Guess not. Several developers have reported success with with their products on Ovi Store - Digital Chocolate, Polarbit, HeroCraft....hell even Chillingo (yes, those famous on the iPhone). Can't beat the facts, but of course an idiot wouldn't know that....

I think you've totally misunderstood what the 1st unregistered actually meant ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Sheesh! Only for UK that is why Nokia itself never got a foot hold at the American market.

Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Probably some petty legal reason it has not gone beyond europe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Sheesh! Only for UK that is why Nokia itself never got a foot hold at the American market.

It's not a Nokia decision it's a Digital Chocolate decision, and they are a San Mateo, California based company.

Quote:

Originally Posted by voreason how many of these 4 million downloads were paid-for?

25

Quote:

Originally Posted by bchliu Good on them.. I must admit, Despite being written in Java, Digital chocolate does make some pretty inventive games. Can you please re-write some as native binaries? I want the 3D version of Rollercoaster rush like the iphone damn it.. (although the 2D one is pretty fun still).

Yeah, and make it as a SIS file. Even Nokia 5800 and N97 without 3D hardware acceleration can run it. C'mon, Quake 1 even runs on a 66Mhz PC without 3D hardware and worse yet was Duke Nukem 3D.

Stop jamming us with Java, d@mmit!!

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