Crash Bandicoot: On the Run has charged to 8.1 million downloads since officially launching on March 25th, 2021.
The hugely impressive number was confirmed by Sensor Tower. It was also revealed that the King developed runner has picked up an additional 3.3m installs, after going live on iOS in certain territories from March 23rd. This means Crash’s first original outing for the mobile platform has already earned itself approximately 11.4 million downloads.
On March 25th, the title ranked first for iPhone game downloads across 82 countries and number one for overall iPhone app downloads in 48 countries. Crash Bandicoot similarly topped the charts on Google Play for most downloaded games in 31 countries, as well as the first spot for overall downloaded apps in six countries.
Upon its early release, Crash mobile stormed up the iOS charts to the number one spot for all iPhone game downloads across 91 countries.
For comparison, King launched Candy Crush Friends Saga in 2018 which generated 1.4 million downloads from the App Store and Google Play within the same period. Even the gargantuan that is Pokémon GO, only managed 4.5 million installs on launch day in 2016 (though it was only available in a limited number of countries).
“Brand recognition”
Interestingly, app analytics platform App Annie shared data on the marsupial too, putting the number of installs slightly higher at an estimated 9.1 million across the top eight markets. This included Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Russia, France, Germany, Spain and the US, with the latter contributing 2.6 million (28.5 per cent) of that figure.
“Crash Bandicoot: On the Run is well-positioned to leverage its brand recognition – particularly tapping into nostalgia from millennials who grew up playing the original 1996 Playstation release and subsequent games in the franchise – with the modern-day appeal and distribution of mobile gaming,” said App Annie head of marketing insights Lexi Sydow.
“Over 9.1 million downloads in just 24 hours is an impressive start, and surely, just the beginning.”
We recently attended an online virtual event detailing the design of Crash Bandicoot: On the Run, where King confirmed that the N. Sane Trilogy was “too detailed and noisy to work with on the small mobile screen“.
Prior to that, Crash Bandicoot on the Run creative lead Stephen Jarrett spoke to us about King’s pursuit to create “the Crashiest Crash game ever“.
