Angry Birds: The Pac-Man of 2012?
Posted on January 6, 2012 by Angela Scruggs
Let's take a minute to reflect. Back in the good ole days of arcade games and quarter filled pockets, Pac-Man was the highest-grossing video game of all time at the end of the 20th century. And who can forget the beloved Tetris of the late ‘80s? Those block falling so fast by level 9 that you can barely flip the shape just in time to avoid the whole thing backing up on itself and the sound of defeat playing over the little speakers of they Nintendo Game Boy. We all fell in love with these classic games.
In its lifetime, Pac-Man sold $2.3 billion (in 2011 equivalence) from hardware sales alone. Then Pac-Man produced an additional $3.4 billion (in 2011 dollars) of revenue from quarters. It sold at least 7 million games on the Atari 2600 while Tetris sold at least 35 million games for the Game Boy. Between the 11 platforms (mobile, game systems, and desktop platforms) and numerous versions Tetris has these days, it has witnessed over 100 million downloads.
As we watch these legacies fade from the forefront of gaming-society, games that waste time and promise entertainment are a dime a dozen. Until things like Angry Birds hypnotize us all - young and old alike - and take over our free time again like the legacies of old used to do. Has Angry Birds become the Pac-Man of the 21st century?
On Christmas day, while many of you were opening brand new iPads, iPhones, Kindle Fires, and other gadgets,
6.5 million of you were downloading the game Angry Birds. That’s right. Between three versions of the game, 6.5m downloads were recorded on Christmas day alone. Beyond that one day spike in downloads, the Angry Birds team announced it reached
500 million free downloads of the game across all platforms back in November. If Pac-Man had only waited to be born in this century, its numbers and revenue would have been just as dramatic. Remember the Google doodle that wasted everyone’s workday on
Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary? Can’t wait to see what Google comes up with on Angry Bird’s first big anniversary.
There is something about the simple concepts in Pac-Man and Tetris that keeps our eyes locked in. Try looking at that Pac-Man Google doodle and not playing it. It’s pretty hard to resist. And now, 500 million downloads later, we know first-hand that Angry Birds has captured the same mesmerizing characteristics. I mean, what other app has
its own storefront?
Now that I have kept your attention for this long, you may feed your urge to bust out the old Game Boy to rock some Tetris, get some Pac-Man Google doodle going, or fire up the iPad for some Angry Bird launching. Whichever you prefer.