

Tapulous acquired by Disney - adamhowell
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/01/tapulous-acquired-by-disney/

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dasil003
The criticism of Tapulous' focus on one app is ignoring the economics of the
app store ([http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-
an...](http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of-
iphone-economics-its-bad-news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html)). There are tons
and tons of amazing, high-quality apps, and yet how many of them ever break
into massive profitability?

If you have an app store hit, it would be foolish to try to diversify given
the near impossibility of any single app attaining real success.

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nailer
> If you have an app store hit, it would be foolish to try to diversify given
> the near impossibility of any single app attaining real success.

Indeed - and keep in mind the Tapulous guys had an iPhone hit before the App
Store. Back when Steve was trying to prevent app installs, Tap Tap Revolution
was one of the first games available on the platform period.

~~~
dasil003
They had a ton of apps back then. When they showed me some of the install
numbers I didn't even believe that there were that many jailbroken iphones.

Like most successful startups, Tapulous was the result of brilliant pivoting
much more so than a grand vision.

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dot
Cool, now Steve can feature more of his own apps! :)

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jw84
Wild guess: $15 million for a small company milking an one-hit wonder. With
security and resources the dev team can finally move on and make something
cool: Club Penguin for iOS!

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
They'd be a one hit wonder if they only succeeded with their first version of
TTR two years ago when the app store first came out. They're actually many hit
wonders. Smart move by disney here.

~~~
jw84
Not knocking their hustle. Every company needs cash money to keep the lights
on but they've only been doing TTR and branded TTR for the past two years.
Twinkle, the closed in network, was cute but didn't take off. Kerfuffle over
Contacts made it disappear.

Point is the Tapulous team has experience and capability producing really high
quality iOS apps. Now with Disney IP and security they have no excuses left to
do something more interesting than dots that blip to a Hannah Montana beat.

PS. When are you coming back to California?

~~~
Timothee
_Now with Disney IP and security they have no excuses left to do something
more interesting than dots that blip to a Hannah Montana beat._

They have no excuses _not_ to do something more interesting…, right?

Anyway, one has to give it to them: they managed to create a huge brand based
on a game concept that already had a huge brand attached to it outside the
iPhone world, namely "Dance Dance Revolution".

I do feel that their website showing 14 TTR games out of 16 apps (apparently
they had more but they are not showed there) shows that they've been milking
the concept and brand to death, but in the end, that's still a major
accomplishment. Especially with that kind of exit.

~~~
jw84
Yes, triple negatives and all that.

Actually Tapulous just remade a 13 year old Japanese game called BeatMania,
which still has a huge following. So big that hackers can make decent living
selling custom $200 BeatMania control boxes.

So the fascination with tapping on dots isn't that out of the norm. Their
licensing contracts isn't so much a reflection on their tastes, I mean, the
negotiation powers isn't with them when concerning record labels.

