Poodle Jumper Press Release

Nugames.co.uk is proud to announce the launch of its first 2D game, Poodle Jumper (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/poodle-jumper/id381527097?mt=8).

Having concentrated thus far on more complex 3D games such as Tractor Beams and DarkFlow, Poodle Jumper is a significant departure, and indicates where Nugames are planning to go in the months ahead.

"Our stated aim is to release a new game every month," promised Nugames lead developer, Giles Chanot, "and diversifying into 2D games is an important part of this strategy. We will continue to develop 3D games but as these take longer to complete, we are going to bring out a range of simpler games in the short term. We are also moving to a 100% iAd supported model going forward, and Poodle Jumper is our first game to be free and iAd supported from day one."

As well as iAd support, Poodle jumper also features Facebook integration to allow users to post score updates straight from the app to their Facebook wall. In the coming months this will be joined by Game Center integration, which will provide a Poodle Jumper leaderboard within the new Apple social gaming property.

"It's a shame Game Center support has been pulled from the older iPhone 3G device generation," notes Chanot, "but nevertheless we are pushing ahead with our implementation as we anticipate Game Center to be launched by Apple as part of it's iOS 4.1 release in the autumn."

Poodle jumper should be familiar to gamers who have played the wildly popular Doodle Jump (apparently Nugames were originally going to launch their game under the name Poodle Jump but this had already been reserved for an as yet unknown app), the key difference of course being the price.

Chanot again: "we love Doodle Jump, but we're not too keen on the price point. For such a simple yet popular game, we felt the iPhone/iPod Touch community deserved a free alternative, so today that is what we are announcing!"

iPhone App Developer Reveals iAd Revenue!

So, Poodle Jumper has been out for a week - how's it doing?

Well, I can officially reveal that it's achieved (with virtually nothing in the way of marketing, remember), a grand total of 1,714 downloads worldwide. Not bad for week 1. The app has appeared in the top 100 games in its 2 game subcategories (Racing and Role Playing) for around 30 countries including the UK (only got to about 102 in the US, darn it!).

How's iAd faring? I was surprised firstly by how many ad requests were generated - over 31,000 in the first week. This means the average user who downloaded the app has generated nearly 20 ad requests (or about 10 minutes of play time).

If Apple was able to fulfil all these requests then even with a modest 1% clickthrough we'd be looking at around $900 revenue (before the "Apple Tax" ;-).

Sadly, the fill rate has hovered around the 12.5% mark, so actual revenue has been much lower ($15.76 to be exact, after Apple took their 40% cut).

Still, many more advertisers should be going on line in the coming weeks, plus iAd goes live in the UK next month, so the fill rate should increase significantly.

Of course, Apple have been fulfilling some ad requests with vanilla developer ads for other apps, but these don't get charged anything for impressions, and the clickthrough cost is only 25c, not the $2 for "real" iAds.

I'll keep you updated with the all important fill rate over the coming weeks - stay (i?)Tuned!

Poodle Jumper now available!

Finally, Poodle Jumper is available!

Check it out now on the App Store.