Apple has revealed the top ten best-selling iPhone applications, and it’s, um, a pretty weird list. For starters, it’s book ended by pure stupidity. The best selling application, the software more iPhone owners have paid for than any other, is…Koi Pond. An interactive fish screensaver. Number 10 is iBeer—yeah, you’ll just have to watch the video for that one.
But let’s get past that, because in between those two moronic apps is a creamy center that’s 60 percent games. Super Monkey Ball’s in there, as are three racing games: Cro-Mag Rally, Moto Chaser, and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D. Rounding out the list is the top-selling card game Texas Hold’em and charming puzzler Enigmo.
It’s great to see a strange and abstract game like Enigmo on this list. It’s also impressive to see that the highest-priced thing on there (Super Monkey Ball, which is eight dollars) is also a game. Forget the speculation, because now that the numbers are in, the iPhone actually does look like a burgeoning little handheld console. And, judging by the other things that are popular, a console that isn’t for people who play other sorts of games.
I noticed this a few days ago when a girl I’ve known for a while, and one who has never been particularly into games, whipped out her iPhone to show me games I’d never heard of before. Me, a person who knows which Nintendo DS game about princesses shares its name with an early 2000s hip-hop album*. This is not the sort of thing that happens to me very often.
Do I think that the likes of Nintendo should be worried? Yes, actually. Look at how old the DS is getting, with only the stopgap DSi coming out anytime soon. Look at how much cheaper the iPhone’s games are—Moto Chaser sometimes sells for a buck, which on the DS will get you 2/3rds of a stylus. And if anyone can find Nintendo’s lifestyle brand cachet, it’s Apple. Hell, you can make a pretty strong argument that Nintendo stole all the ideas that got it that cachet, from Apple.
I really wish there were actual sales numbers to look at here—not least of all so I could know how many people to laugh at for buying iBeer. But even without them, this looks pretty damn good.
*My World, My Way. I guess I cheated a little, since the game in question won’t be out till next February, but you get the idea.
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