There haven't been any detailed case studies of successful iPhone games that use in-app purchases yet, but the anecdotal evidence is beginning to stack up.
Freeverse has done over 70,000 downloads for Flick Fishing, while ngmoco's freemium Eliminate Pro is generally reckoned to be a success, although we've yet to see any official numbers.
Trumping these however is Tapulous, which has just announced Tap Tap Revenge 3 has done over one million song downloads since its October launch.
It hasn't been too specific about the data though. For one thing, we don't know how many units of Tap Tap Revenge 3 have been sold, only that the entire series has done 20 million downloads.
Equally, the phase "we have sold more than one million songs in-app" appears not to be the same thing as one million music pack sales. Tap Tap Revenge 3's in-app purchases are organised in either two song packs for 99c, or six song packs for $2.99.
On that basis then, we can guestimate one million song downloads equates to around $500,000 in gross revenue, or $350,000 in net revenue to Tapulous once Apple's 30 percent is stripped out.
Still, it's a good chunk of cash and no doubt something that helps rack up the almost $1 million of monthly revenue Tapulous recently said it was making.
To ensure this number continues to grow, the company has announced that Tap Tap Revenge 3, which previously cost 99c, is now a free, ad-supported game. As part of this move, the company has also doubled the amount of music players can buy.
And certainly we can expect plenty more publishers and developers to be experimenting with this business model in 2010.
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Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
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