Note that Temple Run: Oz is a paid game rather than a free-to-play title. Blockbuster films are measured in revenue as well as reach – cinema tickets, Blu-ray and DVD sales, merchandise etc – and that's something Temple Run can benefit from. Yet Disney is also contributing to this partnership. Tapping into that network of Temple Run fans is a smart move for Disney as it seeks to put bums on seats for its re-imagining of The Land of Oz. The new title raced to 50m downloads in its first 13 days on Apple and Google's App Stores. It shouldn't be controversial to suggest that of the two brands (Temple Run and Oz, I mean, not Temple Run and Disney) it's Temple Run that has the greater global reach.Įven before Temple Run 2 came out in January 2013, the previous games had generated 170m downloads on iOS and Android, with 15m daily active users. Yet Disney chose instead to work with Imangi Studio, with their respective brands given equal billing in the game's title. It's the latest example of a.) a big gaming brand born and popularised on the app stores that b.) is being treated as an equal partner by a big traditional media company.Įqual? Disney could have decided to make its own endless-runner game for Oz, taking Temple Run's basic gameplay and adding its own twists – much as Activision did for its reboot of Pitfall in 2012. It's just that mobile operators may not be the best people to be providing it: their own walled gardens and focus on brands over quality were what made mobile gaming a niche up until 2008. It's not that Apple and Google's app stores are immune from criticism. That's why I had to stifle a chuckle at the point during Mozilla's Firefox OS press conference at Mobile World Congress when a succession of operators took the stage to complain that Apple and Google's "walled gardens" were bad for consumers. Less than 5% of mobile users paid to download games, and that 5% churned a lot: people had one bad experience then didn't try again for a year or two. While players were the short-term losers – paying £5 for a dreadful film tie-in – in the longer term it hurt the industry. Publishers often made money because they knew the operators would stick their branded games at the top of their portals. Often, the budget left over for making fun gameplay was often slender, to say the least. The publishers of these games paid wild sums for their licensing deals, and then had to suck up expensive costs of porting the games to hundreds of handsets, as demanded by the operators. Rewind a few years to the time before mobile applications were rebranded as apps: an era when mobile operators were the main store-owners for mobile games, and when rubbish movie tie-ins were heavily promoted on their portals. But it's also a useful illustration of the changing nature of licensing deals between the film and mobile games worlds. I've been playing it this morning, and it's fun, albeit with in-app purchase options running up to £69.99, which may be an unwelcome surprise for parents whose children are playing. Other settings and characters from the film plus a hot-air balloon section are included in the game, which costs $0.69 on the App Store and Google Play. The new game takes the Temple Run formula to the Land of Oz, as players run, jump and slide along the Yellow Brick Road.
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