The iPhone has been around for four years now and in that time hundreds of thousands of apps have been released to the iTunes App Store. A lot of them have made headlines, but which ones have had the strongest staying power? The answer may surprise you.
Despite all you may have heard about Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies or Flight Control, it's a game called Doodle Jump that has been purchased more times than any other game, or any other app for that matter, on the iPhone platform.
Above: Doodle Jump
Doodle Jump is a crudely drawn, highly casual platformer in which you basically just jump. Spring your way up as high as possible for the biggest score. Lather, rinse, repeat. Priced at 99 cents, it is the all-time best-selling iPhone app.
Of course, Apple didn't tell us exactly how many downloads there have been, but it has been consistently on the top 10 list ever since was first released about two years ago.
Angry Birds did make the list, but it was all the way down at #4. Still, not too bad considering it hasn't even been available for a year.
Anyway, without further ado, here's the complete top 10 list. All of these apps do actually cost money:
1. Doodle Jump
2. Tap Tap Revenge 3
3. Pocket God
4. Angry Birds
5. Tap Tap Revenge 2.6
6. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
7. Traffic Rush
8. Tap Tap Revenge Classic
9. AppBox Pro Alarm
10. Flight Control
Yeah, they're all games except for some alarm clock app that squeezed in there somehow...
When it comes to free apps, games take a back seat to things like Facebook, Google, and The Weather Channel. The only free game to make the list of most-downloaded free apps was Paper Toss, all the way down at #10.
One thing that is blatantly obvious is that all of these are casual games, but we're now starting to see more hardcore titles push their way to the iPhone, like Infinity Blade. 2011 will be a war of casual versus hardcore games on the iPhone, so the next time we look at this list it will be interesting to see if any of the more expensive games start creeping their way up.
Jan 20, 2011
