The iPhone 4 and Apple’s iTunes App Store have just been awarded new records by Guinness World Records. Oddly enough, this information was revealed in the new Guinness World Records® 2011 Gamer’s Edition, and a bit surprisingly, some of the records that have been set might be putting other video game giants on alert.
Here are some tidbits from the report:
·Fastest-Selling Portable Gaming System – iPhone 4: Analyst estimates place the first-day sales of the iPhone 4, released on June 24, 2010, at 1.5 million units, making it the fast-selling portable gaming device in history. For comparison, the PSP shifted 200,000 units on its launch date in 2005, and the DS took a week to move 500,000 consoles in November 2004.
·Most Popular Application Marketplace - Apple App Store: With over 6.5 billion downloads since its launch in July 2008, the Apple App Store is the most popular downloadable app service in the world. As of September 2010 it hosts 259,470 apps for purchase of free download (a further 50,000 apps that were once available through the service have been discontinued). Of the apps currently available, 61 are flatulence simulators, a genre that includes such masterpieces as Fart Machine, Fart Ocarina and iFart – Epic Rip Edition.
·Largest Downloadable Video Game Store – Apple App Store: As of September 2010, there are 37,362 games available for download via the Apple App Store, making it the world’s largest downloadable video game store. By comparison, PC games download service Steam offers around 1,110 titles, the Xbox Live Indie Arcade has slightly more at 1,300 and the Japanese Virtual Console store for Wii offers 576 titles covering a good chunk of the back catalogues of both Sega and Nintendo.
·Largest Launch Line-up of Any Gaming System – Apple App Store: The Apple App Store’s launch on July 10, 2008 featured over 500 apps – including 145 were games – making it the “Largest Launch Line-up of Any Gaming System”.
·Top Paid-For App Store Game in Most Countries – Angry Birds (Chillingo, 2009): Physics puzzler Angry Birds has been recognized as the top paid-for game in Apple’s App Store in a record 67 territories worldwide, including the US and UK, as of October 2010. Released by publisher Chillingo on December 10 2009, sales of Angry Birds are now in excess of 6.5 million copies.
No surprises for Angry Birds, of course, but the fact that the iPhone 4 is considered the fastest-selling portable gaming system is a bit of a surprise. The smartphone does have a wide range of excellent games in a number of genres, and just about everyone who owns the device has downloaded a game or two or ten.
What doesn’t come as a surprise is that the iTunes App Store is the most popular app marketplace. Being one of the first out of the gate in the modern age of smartphones definitely helped, but the consistency in the store and the ease by which apps can be downloaded or purchased is huge. We’ll just have to wait and see if Apple can hang onto that advantage by the time the end of summer rolls around.
[Via: Guinness World Records]