The number of Fruit Ninja downloads has surpassed the 500 million mark. Moreover, 200 million of them were in China.
This was recently stated by the chief marketing officer of the Australian company Halfbrick Phil Larsen (Phil Larsen) in his speech at the GMIC conference in Beijing. He also mentioned that in China alone, the MAU of the “Fruit Ninja” reaches 50 million.
“Fruit Ninja is a very simple casual game with a universal setting. It’s not about shooting, driving or any other genre. It’s about fruit, like everything in our world. So it breaks down the barriers of language barriers. You don’t need to read to play it. Everything is clear enough. And this approach works great in China,” Larsen said.
In the Chinese market, Halfbrick works with the local company iDreamSky. However, this did not help the Australians to make money in the Middle Kingdom, in which large downloads do not mean large incomes at all.
Halfbrick hopes to rectify the situation by releasing authentic content for the Chinese version of the game, as well as tightly engaging in merchandising, which helped Rovio make good money in China.