Being on the list of ten premium apps and games Apple gave away to users as part of the App Store’s fifth birthday was enough to revitalize downloads of Chair Entertainment’s elegiac masterpiece, Infinity Blade II.
We’re talking some meaningful numbers here: the premium game has racked up nearly six million downloads on the basis of being slashed from its usual asking price of seven bucks a pop to $0…
Eric Johnson, writing for AllThingsD, says “the action-RPG sword-fighting game added 5.7 million new players in seven days”.
On the first day of the promotion alone, Infinity Blade II racked up a cool 1.7 million downloads, three times what the game usually gets in a normal week.
During the same period, the original $5.99 Infinity Blade game and the $2.99 Infinity Blade: Awakening e-book saw their downloads jump 2.5 and 1.7 times, respectively.
You may recall that Epic Games – which publishes the Infinity Blade series (an iOS exclusive, by the way) – showed off at Apple’s iPad 3 event a great-looking prequel called Infinity Blade: Dungeons.
Unfortunately, the company told us last week it has definitely scrubbed the game after it was put on hold as Epic had shuttered developer Impossible Studios which was working on the Dungeons.
The universal Infinity Blade II build is currently seven buck on the App Store.
The game is compatible with the iPhone 3GS/4/4S/5, third-generation iPod touch or later and iPad running iOS 4.3 or later. Needles to say, it looks business on newer devices running the A5/A6 chip, such as the iPad 3/4 and iPhone 4S/5.
The massive 1.1GB download offers gold coins via in-app purchases, but luckily you won’t need to spend a dime in order to play it through the end.
Of course, Chair is betting that free downloads will generate revenue down the road as some gamers may spend a few bucks here and there on virtual coins to advance their character.
Chair spokeswoman Laura Mustard downplayed the importance of in-app purchases:
While we normally notice an increase at times when we’ve done free promotions, we don’t think it’s significant, because the game is balanced in a way that does not require any IAP.
i must say I’ve never been a big fan of this way misused feature.
Matter of face, I loathe freemium games that constantly nag me by asking for cash.