Backflip Studios, indie developer of the popular iPhone games “Paper Toss” and “NinJump” (among others), announced that they are making about $500,000 a month from their games based soley on in game advertising, according to CEO Julian Farrior. Their install base consists of about 47 million on iOS devices alone; plus an additional 5.5 million on Android devices.

While casual games are often frowned upon by traditional “hardcore” gamers, companies like Backflip and Zynga are proving that there is a strong market for gaming entertainment of all kinds, regardless of familiarity with consoles, hardware types, or even one’s initial perceptions of gaming.

My thoughts:

While I’ve never played it, and it looks pretty simple, any progress towards making gaming more mainstream is fine by me. If the Android, iPhone, or any other marketplace can do this then so be it.

The bigger question is, who isn’t taking advantage of casual market games? There are plenty of family friendly games out there for casual gamers, and there are also plenty of Bible or religious themed apps. It would be nice to see if any new Christian themed or games from Christian companies come out to take advantage of this market. There are certainly quite a few ones out already, but many of these are puzzle game clones or Bible trivia games.

The potential seems untapped, and with the ease of releasing simple, low overhead games I think there will be an explosion of Christian games soon. The question I think is just how soon.

Are there any Christian apps or games that spring to mind as being good? Any you would recommend? Do you have any experience in developing for iOS or the Android platform? Sound off in the comments below.

Source:

Develop-online.net

Tags: apple, backflip studios, download, indie, iphone, marketplace