Tapulous acquired by Disney
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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.
Like most successful startups, Tapulous was the result of brilliant pivoting much more so than a grand vision.
I imagine it's mostly licensing issues and the fact that this would set up Tap Tap as a competitor to iTunes, which would surely get them booted out of the App Store.
It's best to think of Tap Tap as an entertainment factory, which (I'm guessing) is why Disney is so interested in it. They now have a direct line to quickly growing platforms (iPhone and iPad).
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?
ps- stay tuned. will be in town in late July.
$15 mil is not a lot of money for a company that had investment, and a dozen products.
This ultimately smells like a ditch effort.
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.
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 $200 BeatMania control boxes.
So the fascination with tapping on dots isn't that out of the norm. Their licensing contracts isn't so much a reflection on their tastes, I mean, the negotiation powers isn't with them when concerning record labels.
As you're saying, this acquisition might just mean:
foreach ($disney_artists as $artist) {
make("TTR $artist->name");
}
Understatement of the year!