It’s hard to believe how explosive the mobile gaming scene has become. It was only just a few years ago that we were still playing basic and admittedly pretty awful games on our mobile phones to just pass the time. Now mobile games are selling by the millions and even getting their own theme park attractions. Halfbrick was one of the first on the scene and they’re celebrating a milestone this week.
You may know of a little game called Fruit Ninja on the App Store and Google Play. For those unfamiliar, the game tasks players to cut fruit flying across the screen with their finger while avoiding bombs and other dangers. It’s a simple concept, but it has really caught on over the last two years that the game has been available on the App Store.
To celebrate its two year anniversary, Halfbrick has been throwing some crazy Fruit Ninja parties in the studio’s native Australia. They even held a contest to find the best Fruit Ninja Master which saw the winner being sent to Japan to learn some real ninja techniques that probably don’t involve cutting fruit.
What’s even more amazing is the absolutely massive number of people who have played the game thus far. Halfbrick has compiled the data and have found that there are 300 million people playing Fruit Ninja all over the world. On top of that, 50 billion combos have been achieved, over 1.5 trillion pieces of fruit have been cut over the last two years. They also found that over 100 years of Fruit Ninja is played every day. That’s a lot of people playing a game that I can only play one round of before I get bored.
With those kind of numbers, the game must be really successful. How successful? Try the second best selling App Store game of all time. They don’t mention it, but it’s obvious that only Angry Birds stands between Fruit Ninja and ultimate glory. Maybe Halfbrick should make a game called Bird Ninja to take on Angry Birds at their own game.
Halfbrick won’t be resting on their laurels though. Phil Larsen, Chief Marketing Officer at Halfbrick, says that they have more updates on the way for Fruit Ninja. They will also continue to expand on their current explosive hit – Jetpack Joyride.
It’s really encouraging to see Halfbrick do so well after the Australian games industry was hit by a wave of studio closures and layoffs. Of course, Halfbrick is part of the super popular mobile games movement so there’s no real danger of them being closed. Their example will hopefully see more game development pop up throughout the country.
As an aside, Halfbrick is offering free codes for Fruit Ninja on the App Store. Just hit up the anniversary Web site and give them your email address. It’s a limited time offer so you better act fast.
