iPad and iPhone games making a buttload of money has become a pretty standard phenomenon, what with Candy Crush being as addictive as heroin and phones loaded with Flappy Birds selling for as high as $1,500 on eBay. EA reportedly never believed that The Simpsons: Tapped Out was going to be as huge of a financial success as it has been, but Homer and Bart ended up earning the company more than $100 million between its launch in October 2012 and September of last year. I guess that’s what happens when EA expects people to pay $20 just to get Luann Van Houten and the cracker factory.
If you think that a stupid game (that I love) that involves tapping on characters so they perform meaningless tasks to tell a few standard Simpsons jokes earning 9 figures is insane, get ready to choke yourself to death by swallowing your own iPhones. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, the iPad celebration of narcissism and a horseshit ideology that celebrity success is somehow easy to obtain, is supposedly on pace to earn more than $200 million by the year’s end. That’s right, the game that just came out last month.
Even though the game is a free download, analysts report that in-app purchases might generate up to $200 million this year alone.
To put the estimated profits for Kim Kardashian: Hollywood into perspective, The Simpsons: Tapped Out was one of the most popular free games of last year and it took over a year to reach $100 million in revenue.
Kim’s game is expected to double that figure in even less time.
How is that possible? In short, everyone knows Kim’s name.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?” says industry analyst Doug Creutz. “Obviously Kim Kardashian’s brand has driven people to download the game. But at this point, the game has taken on a life of its own.” (Via Hollywood Gossip)
I don’t mean to discount Hollywood Gossip or Perez Hilton, who also wrote the same thing with a different person fluffing the Kardashian brand, but where is the actual proof that this game is going to earn that specific amount of money? I know that gossip blogging has become a snazzy headline business, but at least give me some stats that make this spike in my blood pressure worthwhile. After all, there are in-app purchases that cost as much as $99.99 (that I forgot to mention in my review of the game, probably because my nose was bleeding) so how many people are shelling out Ben Franklins over something so asinine?
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, that $200 million remark comes directly from Creutz, and he also offers no actual evidence that it’s going to happen. As I pointed out in my review, the game has a 5-star review through one month, which isn’t exactly a marvelous feat considering Kardashian has millions of followers who would eat their young if their goddess demanded. It’s that same point, though, that makes me think that a 9-figure 2014 might not be out of the question for Glu Games and Kardashian.
But hey, she’s earned it with all that talent and charm.