Surprise Million Seller: Pony Friends for DS
Developer Tantalus Media (MX vs. ATV games for DS/PSP) might not ring a bell for most of you, but the Melbourne-based studio saw more than a million copies sold worldwide of its 2007 DS game Pony Friends, a horse riding simulator not much unlike My Horse and Me and I presume many other similar DS titles.
I'd never heard of the Eidos-published title myself, but the Sydney Morning Herald called it the "the biggest-selling single-format game ever developed in Australia" last year. Not bad for a title with a 67 Metacritic average! Naturally, the company is planning an upcoming sequel.
"The original sold over a million copies on the DS when we released it a couple of years ago, and I guess it is an example of the changing face of gaming," says Tom Crago, CEO of Tantalus and also president of the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA), in an interview with iTWire.
He continues, "Here is a game that is pointed squarely at young girls, a demographic that has largely been ignored by developers, and it has done really well. We can’t ignore the fact that the goal post constantly shift[s] in this industry, which is one of the best things about it."
With the DS's huge install base and the system's popularity with younger girls, it shouldn't surprise you that there are other female-targeted titles that snuck out a million sales while you weren't paying attention: High School Musical: Makin' the Cut! with 1.2 million units moved in the U.S., and Western Europe, and Hannah Montana with 1.3 million sold in the States alone (and that's not even the Guitar Hero-styled Music Jam version either!).
Not all of the DS's surprise million sellers will turn off traditional gamers -- Drawn to Life, the first non-mobile title from 5th Cell (Scribblenauts, Lock's Quest), has apparently sold around a million units worldwide. I didn't expect it did that well at all, but I guess that explains why THQ put in an order for a SpongeBob SquarePants spin-off (developed by Altron) and a Wii sequel. Imagine if it had horses, though.
[Via GoNintendo]
