Australian-developed game Crossy Road has been a massive hit on iOS, with over 10 million downloads so far. The game has been released for Android this week, but unusually, it will initially only be available on Amazon’s App Store. Why did the developers go down that path?
At a media event to celebrate the launch, developers Andre Sum and Matthew Hall explained that it wasn’t so much a matter of conscious planning. Hall already knew a member of Amazon’s Fire TV team, who actively encouraged him to work with Amazon to port and promote the game. (A Fire TV version of Crossy Road is due for release shortly as well.)
“It’s just a case of they asked, we delivered,” Hall said. Requests for an Android version have been constant ever since the game was released, he added: “Half the emails we get are ‘when is it coming to Android?’”
Crossy Road will be an exclusive on the Amazon App Store until 8 January 2015; after that, it will be available on Google Play as well. If you haven’t installed the App Store on your Android device, check out our guide to how to set it up. And if you suck at Crossy Road itself, Kotaku has some useful tips.
The game was developed quite speedily. “This was going to be a 6-week project,” Hall said. “At that six-week point we looked at each other and said ‘this has the quality to be really big’, so we blew out the project to a massive 12 weeks of work. But there were still large amounts of content we cut to get it out the door.”
Comments
5 responses to “Why Crossy Road’s Developers Launched On Android Through Amazon”
No thanks. I tried the Amazon app store and deleted it some time after. Google Play just integrates so much better with android devices.
Yeah same.
No Google Play, no download from me.
For some reason, my Amazon App Store login thinks I’m American (I don’t have a VPN or anything…). But when I log in on my phone it takes me to the Australian Store. So, I can’t get apps from their website because their website thinks my account is American. So it lets me add apps to my account, but when I log in on my phone it won’t let me see those apps ’cause it thinks I’m Australian. 🙁
haha love how for some app developers this is a huge and massive timeline. Good on em! Hope they find even more success! Love a good Aussie tech success story.
It’s just a case of they asked, with a big fat wallet, we delivered,”
FTFY
thats unfortunate though the game has just recently swept through the podcast scene with giant bomb and rooster teeth talking extensively about it being the current mobile gaming addiction at the office i and others were keen to give it ago, in two weeks post christmas i doubt the excitement will be the same