Things are looking up for RIM, I say. Why? An unknown developer, Percunia Games, new to the BlackBerry developer program (as of October 8, 2012 to be exact), with no marketing whatsoever [1], has uploaded a modest game to App World, and downloads have likely passed the 1,000 mark as of this evening! Nearly got there yesterday. Looked like a download every minute or so last I checked.
It is going out on a limb to say it, and is hugely biased due to the small sample size, but there is lots of activity around BlackBerry right now. What BlackBerry has that many other platforms do not is global reach. Looking at the countries that downloaded, there are more than a handful of Saudi Arabian, Moroccan, Vietnamese, Azerbaijan Thumb Swypers. This is Apple App store territory. We are new to this and it is a free app after all, but this looks to be very encouraging for the platform.
The big reveal, BlackBerry 10 devices, will debut at the end of the month. Nearly all downloads were for the PlayBook version. A BlackBerry 10 version of Thumb Swyper Free was released simultaneously with the PlayBook version, since it was a checkbox and the Marmalade simulator reflects reality rather well. Saw that two or so BB10 devices downloaded Thumb Swyper Free in the logs! I would love to ask them how it went. Am a little nervous, not having a Dev Alpha device but am checking into that.
Four out of Five (4/5) stars so far, good download activity, with more on the horizon. Percunia was founded as an Apple Developer in 2008, but could RIM in 2013 be the second chance we are waiting for? Let's hope so!
We'll calm down soon, the inevitable drop-off is coming. Our goal is to release the full paid version asap, while the iron is still hot.
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[1] There is this blog of course, and a hastily put together Twitter account and Facebook Page
1 comment:
We hit 1,000 downloads at 07:14 (AM) Eastern Time! It was a PlayBook in the UK.
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