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iPhone game Orbital suffers weak sales, 80 per cent piracy in first week

It's 59p. Just buy it.

iPhone game Orbital suffers weak sales, 80 per cent piracy in first week
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| Orbital

What’s wrong with you? How is it that you’ve let Pocket Girlfriend get to number four in the App Store chart while Orbital languishes outside in the cold space beneath the overpass reserved for games that sell fewer than 100,000 copies?

Triplepoint - the PR company charged with promoting the game - has been venting on its blog about the mystifying failure of Orbital to bring in the bucks despite critical acclaim, celebrity endorsement, and celebrity critic endorsement.

Having established rightly that Orbital has been far less successful than it deserves to be, the author goes on to list the possible reasons.

Is piracy to blame? No. While it did suffer a rate of 80 per cent in its opening week, this is by no means unusual. The rate is now 24 per cent.

Is it because there was no free or discounted version? No, because there’s been both. In fact, it’s on offer now, at the minimal cost of 59p - less than the price of a packet of peanuts.

In fact, Orbital’s commercial disappointment is the result of several uncontrollable factors. As the author puts it, “App Store success isn’t so much about catching lightning in a bottle as it is about when your lightning strikes and what other bolts are coming down at the same time.”

Mobile-Ent.biz
Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.