We often bang on about the reasons original mobile games don't sell as many downloads as the big branded titles, so we're breaking out the bubbly for Vivendi Games Mobile's latest news, which bucks that trend.
The publisher has announced that its Surviving High School franchise generated a whopping 7.5 million downloads in 2007.
Note, that's split between two games Surviving High School, and Surviving High School '07 and that's the number of episodes downloaded, not actual games. The game lets people download new episodes to play at regular intervals.
However, that doesn't take away from the achievement of the 7.5 million figure, so it's no surprise to see Vivendi hailing it as the most successful original IP in mobile history.
The news also hints that this Web 2.0 promotion lark might be a goer for mobile publishers. Surviving High School '07 had its own MySpace profile and a competition for fans to be included in the game.
There's even now a Facebook group called 'I'm Addicted to Surviving High School '07', which Vivendi is trumpeting in its press release.
(We'd like to point out that there are also Facebook groups called 'Gerbils Aren't Sextoys', 'Aliens Cause Global Warming', and 'Stop bitchin about jodie marsh just coz she's hot n ur not', so it doesn't prove much.)
Anyway, congrats to Vivendi and developer Centerscore for their achievement last year. They're now focused on the latest incarnation, Surviving High School '08, for which they're letting fans submit their own suggested storylines.
Hopefully they'll rework the game for the UK market soon. A few knives, guns and sadistic PE teachers, and Surviving Senior School could be a hit!
Maybe.
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Contributing Editor
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)
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