迪士尼今年7月收购手机游戏开发商Tapulous，意在借Tapulous联合创始人之手，在《Tap Tap Revenge》这款热门音乐游戏的基础上，拓展刚刚起步的手机游戏部门业务。

Tapulous公司联合创始人Bart Decrem和Andrew Lacy在本月提出了一个游戏交叉推广的新项目，希望帮助迪士尼互动娱乐部门扭转亏损局面。据游戏邦了解，迪士尼互动娱乐部门已赶在iPhone、iPad圣诞节激活量大增之前，在本周一发行了第四个版本的《Tap Tap Revenge》。仅在去年圣诞节当天，Tapulous游戏销量就达到了80万份，计划在今年出售100万份。据称Tapulous的游戏下载量目前已达4000万次，而迪士尼的手机游戏下载量却还不到2000万次。

Tron：Legacy-logo

另外，迪士尼还发行了《Tron: Legacy》这款以同名电影为题材的新游戏，Tapulous将在该游戏中交叉推广新款手机应用。

《Tap Tap Revenge》的玩家在游戏过程中如果演奏了《Tron: Legacy》中的歌曲，就可以赢取积分奖励，《Tron: Legacy》也将在游戏中嵌入《Tap Tap Revenge》的宣传广告。

Tapulous的创始人认为，这种交叉推广手段有助于自己的游戏从苹果App Store的其他20多万款应用中脱颖而出。Decrem表示，“如果你没有进入应用100强，苹果就不会来关注你，用户也不会来了解你。除非用户听说过这款游戏，看到它正在做推广活动，或者通过另一款应用做宣传。所以建立这种应用交叉推广网络，是我们致力执行的一个发展策略。”

为刺激游戏下载量， Decrem和Lacy还说服迪士尼将《Tron: Legacy》的售价从4.99美元降至99美分。

据悉，Tapulous于2008年7月成立于美国加州，创立资金是300万美元，从去年6月开始大有收益。而迪士尼的电子游戏部门，截止今年10月份，亏损已经达到2.34亿美元。迪士尼现在已将希望全部寄托在社交、手机游戏领域，希望可以由此挽回亏损状态，在7月收购了Tapulous；另外还出手5.63亿美元收购社交游戏开发商Playdom公司，如果后者的运营表现能够达标，迪士尼还得再额外支付2亿美元。

与此同时，迪士尼还扩大了Tapulous的人员规模，该公司在美国帕洛阿托尔工作室的成员已经增至50人左右，在美国格兰岱尔市、捷克布拉格等工作室的员工已经将近150人。

市场调研公司Juniper Research曾预测，手机应用领域的营收将从2009年的100亿美元，增长到2015年的320亿美元。迪士尼不可能无视这一市场的巨大发展潜力，所以才会如此重视手机游戏领域。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

When The Walt Disney Co. bought mobile game maker Tapulous Inc. in July, Disney wanted the startup’s cofounders to build upon the popular “Tap Tap Revenge” franchise of music apps for iPhones and other gadgets and set the strategy for its fledgling mobile games division.

This month, the efforts of Tapulous co-founders Bart Decrem and Andrew Lacy are giving shape to Disney’s plan for mobile and social games to reverse hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses at its interactive unit.

Early Monday, the Disney interactive unit released the fourth version of “Tap Tap Revenge” in time for the rush of downloads expected by people who get iPhones and iPads for Christmas. Last year, Tapulous sold 800,000 games on Christmas Day and it’s aiming for a million this year.

In “Tap Tap Revenge,” which works on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad from Apple Inc., players tap the screen in time to the music to score points. Each version includes a different set of songs, and players can pay to add even more.

Disney also just released “Tron: Legacy,” a game that will test Decrem and Lacy’s first major strategy decision at Disney to promote new mobile apps within existing games. “Tron: Legacy,” based on the recent movie of the same name, literally taps into 40 million Tapulous games that have already been downloaded. Disney apps, meanwhile, have been downloaded just under 20 million times.

Tap Tap players can get points for playing Tron songs, while Tron promotes Tap Tap titles with in-game advertising.

The Tapulous founders say such cross-promotion is a way to stand out from the 200,000 other apps available on Apple Inc.’s app store.

“If you’re not in the Top 100, if you’re not featured by Apple, users don’t know about you,” Decrem said in an interview. “The only way to find out about an app is if they’ve heard of it, if they see it promoted, or if it’s being promoted from one app to the other app. So building these networks of apps is really the strategy that we’re all running towards.”

To spur sales, Decrem and Lacy also convinced Disney to reduce the cost of the Tron game to 99 cents from $4.99.

Tapulous, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that launched with around $3 million in capital in July 2008, has been profitable since June of last year. It was folded into the segment of Disney that runs its websites and video games, which lost $234 million in the year to Oct. 2 on $761 million in revenue.

Disney is betting big on social and mobile games to turn the interactive division around. In July, after acquiring Tapulous for an undisclosed sum, it also bought social game maker Playdom for $563 million. It will pay another $200 million if Playdom does well.

Meanwhile, it has been adding staff at Tapulous. The staff in Palo Alto doubled to about 50, and in all there are nearly 150 employees in locations including Glendale, Calif., and Prague.

The Disney unit is targeting a global market for apps that Juniper Research estimates will hit $32 billion in 2015 from $10 billion in 2009. The estimate includes revenue from paid apps, subscriptions and advertising.（source:abcnews）