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iPhone music games developer Tapulous is looking beyond iPhone for its hugely popular Tap Tap Revenge series, according to its VP of business development Tim O’Brien.
“To date we haven’t been motivated to move to another platform, but in 2010 we’re definitely looking to port,” he said, while appearing at the MidemNet Mobile Apps and Music panel session.
The Tap Tap Revenge games have now generated more than 25 million downloads on the App Store, and it was recently reported that Tapulous is making $1 million a month from them, through a mixture of game sales and in-app payments.
Tapulous made its iPhone music game Tap Tap Revenge free just before Christmas, with the aim of making money from ads and in-app song purchases rather than an initial download price.
The question now is how many of those people will buy songs, and whether Tapulous can capitalise on its 20-million-strong userbase with ads – it signed an exclusive deal with mobile advertising firm AdMob earlier last year.
Grr! iPhone developer Tapulous has launched the latest artist spin-off from its Tap Tap Revenge games: Metallica Revenge.
The game features branded visuals and tracks including Enter Sandman, One, Master of Puppets and For Whom The Bell Tolls. And for added rawk factor, there are new modes with four and five tap rails, rather than the usual three. This is the iPhone music game equivalent of turning amps up to 11, we think.
The game has gone live today, and costs $4.99. It follows previous games created by Tapulous for Coldplay, Weezer, Lady Gaga and Nine Inch Nails.
Coldplay have their own iPhone music game, courtesy of US developer Tapulous. It’s a revamped version of that company’s Tap Tap Revenge game, meaning the British band are following in Nine Inch Nails and Weezer’s footsteps.
It’s also another sign of Tapulous’ good working relationship with EMI, which has previously supplied tracks from Katy Perry for Tap Tap Revenge itself. Tap Tap Coldplay is being sold for £2.99 here in the UK App Store, and offers ten of the band’s hits to tap along with, plus remixes.
Oh, and it integrates with Facebook, has a Coldplay news feed and lets users buy songs on the iTunes Store too. Although as you can see from the end of our video (above) that we shot this morning, the latter feature has some teething issues.
Fancy a go? Click here to get it from the App Store.
As an example of how it works, music game Tap Tap Revenge 2 now offers the feature, meaning that when you play a song in the game, a message gets published to your feed saying (for example) “Stuart submitted a score of 121150 on The Sound of Settling by Death Cab for Cutie on Easy” with a link for other people to buy the game.
Facebook Connect also lets app users check what their friends have been up to – as an example, a streaming music app with the feature might let them check what their Facebook friends have been listening to, while games let them compare high scores.
We’ve written plenty about iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge in the past, and its publisher Tapulous’ work with labels and artists. But do you sell more music by licensing your song to such a game?
The company has provided an interesting stat relating to its recent offering of Katy Perry’s Hot N Cold track within Tap Tap Revenge. More than 250,000 players downloaded it to play along with, and of those, 56,000 then clicked through to buy the song on the iTunes Store.
The advantage Tap Tap Revenge has over console music games – for now – is that it has these links to the iTunes Store embedded within the game itself, driving players to buy from iTunes on the handset itself. By contrast, although the latest versions of Guitar Hero and Rock Band on console let players download tracks to play in the game, there’s no link to buy pure music downloads.
We’ve been banging on about iPhone applications for a while ago, and in last week’s issue of the Music Ally Report, we covered some of the ways iPhone apps are coming onto the music industry’s radar. But which apps are we actually using on our iPhones, hmm?
We thought we should tell you. So, here’s a dozen of the best iPhone music apps, complete with links to buy them.
1. Guitar Rock Tour (£4.99 – right)
A music game that pretty much swipes the Guitar Hero formula and runs off with it cackling. You have to tap the frets at the bottom of the screen as notes travel down a guitar, with an array of proper songs including Beat It, Smoke On The Water, Heart-Shaped Box and – yes! – Rock You Like A Hurricane. Get it
On Saturday, Facebook revealed that 
