Ngmoco Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Ngmoco's We Farm now available in Canada

by Mike Schramm (Jul 20th, 2010)

Ngmoco has released the followup to its popular We Rule game on the Canadian App Store. We Farm is, as you can see above, very similar to We Rule, with the main difference being that the game is set on a farm rather than in a medieval fantasy world. You'll be able to raise animals, plant ...

Flurry: In-app purchases generating lots more revenue per user

by Mike Schramm (Jul 16th, 2010)

Analytics firm Flurry has announced that in-app purchases are generating $14.66 per user per year in June of 2010, which is a few times larger than it has been in the past. Previously to 2010, the games tracked were generating only a few bucks per user per year, but in January the total jumped to ...

Apple spotlights apps ready for iOS 4.0

by Mike Schramm (Jun 26th, 2010)

We already spotlighted a few big apps that have made the jump to iOS 4 (and I'm sure we'll have more coming up soon), but Apple has gone ahead and put a few of its favorites on a page in iTunes for you to browse through as well. There are some excellent games on the list (PopCap didn't waste any ...

TUAW's Daily App: Twitterrific (and others!)

by Mike Schramm (Jun 25th, 2010)

Ok, so we're kind of cheating with this one; you probably already know about Twitterrific, if you don't actually have it installed on your iPhone. But we're using our daily app spotlight today to point out that the folks at Iconfactory have released version 3.0 of the popular Twitter client. Along ...

Canabalt now universal, Godfinger now available

by Mike Schramm (Jun 22nd, 2010)

Here's two big updates to big games on the App Store lately -- first up, the much-loved Canabalt has now gone universal, so if you have an iPhone and an iPad and have already purchased the app, you can now play it in full resolution on your iPad. Of course, if you haven't bought the app yet, what ...

Crazy usage stats from Ngmoco

by Kelly Guimont (Jun 17th, 2010)

Ah, ngmoco. You wacky purveyors of "freemium" games. I love you so. If you have any doubts, check out my account. Oh yes. See? I'm there. Playing two different versions of We Rule on my phone, and a version on the iPad. Don't even get me started on the Godfinger! Good heavens. Turns out I'm not ...

Ngmoco buys Stumptown Game Machine, EA and Gameloft report revenue growth

by Mike Schramm (May 13th, 2010)

A few news items from the business side of iPhone games this week, courtesy of the folks over at Mobile Entertainment. Ngmoco has purchased developer Stumptown Game Machine, creators of their popular Touch Pets Dogs release. Unfortunately, there's no information on how much the deal was worth, but ...

MyTown updates to version 3.1, adds collectibles and social features

by Mike Schramm (May 6th, 2010)

MyTown is one of the hottest things going on the App Store right now in terms of social apps. As we mentioned in the interview with CEO Keith Lee a while back, they've actually got more users than Foursquare. The company has just released version 3.1 of the app, which introduces more collectible ...

We Rule content update, server fixes incoming

by Mike Schramm (May 3rd, 2010)

Ngmoco CEO Neil Young posted another update last week about We Rule. That game is probably the biggest hit Ngmoco has come across yet with its freemium model, but unfortunately, the title has been plagued with service outages since the release. Young says that they simply underestimated the amount ...

360iDev: Hands-on with Freeverse's Warpgate HD and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

by Mike Schramm (Apr 16th, 2010)

We got to play two of Freeverse's current and future offerings this past week at 360iDev. Warpgate HD was the first -- it's out now on the App Store, and is due out for the iPhone and iPod touch. It was originally designed for the iPhone, but it ended up being a good fit for the larger device, so ...

Current game network developers comment on Apple's Game Center

by Mike Schramm (Apr 8th, 2010)

Way back in February at Macworld, one of my questions to Eros Remini of OpenFeint was pretty blunt: "Why," I asked a representative from the biggest third-party social gaming network on the iPhone, "haven't we seen an official platform-wide network?" Remini didn't have a good answer for Apple, but ...

iPhone OS 4.0: Apple announces Game Center, a social gaming network for the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Apr 8th, 2010)

This is huge -- Apple has announced Game Center, an official social gaming network for the iPhone, coming to the device along with OS 4.0 this summer. So far, there have been a few social networks vying for an audience in the form of OpenFeint and Ngmoco's Plus+ system, but Apple's going official, ...

Apple adds App of the Week to the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Apr 5th, 2010)

This little tidbit was hidden in the rush of iPad news last week, but if you check out the iTunes App Store, you'll notice that Apple has started promoting an official iPhone and iPad App of the Week (presumably every week from now on). They're not diving very deep to find apps for this one (MLB ...

iFund doubles to $200 million, supporting Ngmoco, Booyah, and others on the iPad

by Mike Schramm (Apr 1st, 2010)

The iFund has been one of the driving forces behind some of the biggest names in iPhone development, so it's not a surprise at all that the investors are expanding their money pool and oversight to include the iPad as well. They're opening up the funding to a full $200 million (double what the ...

We Rule hits a million sessions in 24 hours

by Mike Schramm (Mar 26th, 2010)

Ngmoco CEO Neil Young tweeted on the official account that We Rule has reached a million app sessions in a 24 hour period, which means we can probably call their big freemium experiment an early success. We've seen quite a few people talking about We Rule and their accounts in our comments and on ...