This is the world we live in. A world where the scales have shifted. A world where brand new mobile games like Crossy Road have the potential to reach millions upon millions of people in the shortest period of time.
Case in point: the Android version of iOS smash-hit Crossy Road. It was released on Google Play for Android devices on January 7. Now, 20 days later, the game has hit 10 million downloads.
I find the scale and potential of mobile gaming tremendous and terrifying at the exact same time. Terrifying, not because I have a problem with mobile gaming (Crossy Road is easily the game I’ve spent the most time with over the last couple of months) terrifying because mobile gaming continues to operate on a scale that we cannot understand and cannot predict. There’s no telling what’s going to go crazy, no telling what will be sticky. How does one operate under those circumstances? I guess you can’t, you just have to ride that wave.
The Android version of Crossy Road wasn’t made by the original Australian creators of the game. Instead the project was handed off to Yodo1, a leading mobile publisher in the states. As you might expect, they were pretty chuffed with the result.
“The very moment we got our hands on an early beta of the game last August, our entire review team instantly caught Crossy Road fever,” said Henry Fong, CEO of Yodo1. “We worked closely with the Hipster Whale guys to preserve its fun, indie spirit. Together, we were able to reach a massive fan base without compromising the gaming experience. We’re so glad gamers love it as much as we do.”
Matt Hall of Hipster Whale, one of the original creators, is happy with the partership which, given the incredible success of Crossy Road, was sort of essential.
“Crossy Road was our best attempt to create an accessible, popular app that anyone can enjoy. We were hoping it might find some fans, but it has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” he said. “It would have been difficult for our tiny Australian team to support its millions of players around the world. Partnering with Yodo1 means we can devote all our time to making new updates and versions of Crossy Road as good as they can be.”
Which means that, for Hipster Whale, the priority for the near future is more content for Crossy Road.
“We’re working with Yodo1 to develop a lot more surprises for future updates for Crossy Road players,” he explained. “With the success of the recent Australian-themed character update, we want to continue bringing relevant content to Crossy Roaders of different cultures across the globe.”
Comments
20 responses to “Crossy Road Just Did 10 Million Downloads In 20 Days”
Not knowing anything at all about this game, how does it differ from Frogger, which it resembles in the above screenshot?
It’s not as good as Frogger. Hope that helps.
It is basically and endless runner version of frogger, where you can’t sit still for very long or you get killed anyway.
I downloaded it last week out of curiosity. It’s exactly like frogger, but when you collect coins you cash them in to get a new character.
I was hoping to get something addictive and interesting out of it. After 10 minutes I realised I had gotten everything I possibly could out of it and then deleted it.
I was playing Frogger on an old arcade cabinet the other day and then some kids walked past and they’re like “THEY HAVE CROSSY ROADS ON THIS???”
Kids these days…
You have to use your hands??? That’s a kid’s toy
My highest score is 96. Fluke, cos I can’t get past 35 these days. Argh!
My wife got 595. She hates video games too. I don’t know how she did it.
It is impressive, but when it’s free it doesn’t really mean all that much besides being, essentially, a meme.
I’ve downloaded it on my phone because it was recommended through the store and I figured “why not, I’ve heard about that”. Haven’t even opened it once, though.
Not exactly true, since Unity Ads gives them ad revenue on top of the character sales.
I realise they do make some money from people playing it, but I assume they don’t make any money from people like myself who haven’t spent any time with it? Versus, say, Framed which has the upfront fee to play.
But again: it is impressive, no doubt.
I dunno, I think theyd get more than you might think. Didnt that flappy bird guy (who also released it for free) get to the point where he was getting tens of thousands a day from advertising revenue? Could be wrong…
Yeah the Flappy Bird guy was getting US$50,000 per day from ad revenue…. it’s absurd
I’ve always wanted to be an mobile games developer. To learn programming, I looked at recreating old games as practice and to understand how common game mechanics were programmed. I’ve also made changes to them, mixed mechanics together to see how things work (it’s essentially what most programming 101 books tell you to do, experiment and have fun.)
I maybe completely wrong (have been before…) but this looks like someone took frogger and made it isometric…than copied the flappy bird naming convention. At which point in a developer’s brainstorming process does that seem like a good idea to sell it. So good that they describe it as “”Crossy Road was our best attempt to create an accessible, popular app that anyone can enjoy.””
Well, they took the core mechanic of Frogger, try to cross busy terrain without getting squashed, and made it endless and with more variation. Made it very difficult to get high scores, a-la Flappy Bird (and took the naming convention), and made it impossible to sit still for long.
I was thinking of combining Crossy Road and Flappy Bird. You have an isometric view of a bird running and then press a button to make him fly over stuff.
I’ll call it “Crappy Bird”.
After a day of research, I am stepping back from the statement I made earlier (above). The developers pushed out essentially a minimum product that they considered to be fun (and the audience seems to agree). I’ll await (and hope) that the game continues to develop with more content (and not just stay stagnant as this minimum product).
As such, I have to apologise for my earlier remarks… ^_^
So if crossy road is free, how does it make money ? I have no adverts on mine ? It’s on iOS
Purchasing useless stuff such as new characters
It’s. Fucking. Frogger.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.