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The success of Firemint's Flight Control afforded the Melbourne games developer the funds and the time to develop and polish Real Racing for the iPhone. Real Racing featured social connectivity and offered gamers the ability to upload their replays to youtube, functionality that had not appeared in handheld gaming yet. It took a years worth of development and was known to be one of the most expensive iPhone titles made at the time.
It was released in June 2009 for $9.99 a pop in a market saturated by 99 cent games. Only one other game demanded such a price in the appstore, and that was The Sims 3, which incidentally was developed by IronMonkey Studios who are located just down the road from Firemint.
It was an extremely risky endeavour and made "no business sense at all" admitted Firemint CEO, Rob Murray, who commented that he had second thoughts about Real Racing...
(Rob Murray) It was very ambitious and there were plenty of times when I wished I hadn't started the game. It wasn't just that we were developing this incredibly rich game, developing Cloudcell [Firemint's online platform] at the same time made everything even bigger and more complex. It's a very hard decision to spend so much money on one game, so you really have to find something to believe in and believe in strongly.Of course, this was before all the acclaim, and the incredible effort by Firemint of updates and promotion of Real Racing resulting in some extraordinary exposure throughout internet media and even on TV. It's no question that they were able to recoup the costs of Real Racing development, and then some. This week, Firemint will be releasing the follow up, Real Racing 2. The budget for Real Racing 2 is double that of its predecessor, costing 2 million dollars to make, and it took Firemint 18 months to develop. It boasts 16 online multiplayer, licensed cars, destructable vehicles and damage modelling, car upgrades and decals, and yet, it will only cost the same as Real Racing did last year. Here's the feature list: * 30 officially licensed cars * 16 car grid against AI, and 16 player online racing – an iOS first * Career mode with well over 10 hours gameplay and a range of event types * Earn in-game currency to buy and sell cars, and buy upgrades * 5 game modes: Career Mode, Quick Race, Time Trial, Local Multiplayer (8 players), Online Multiplayer (16 players) * 15 locations with 40 miles of highly detailed race track * Vehicle damage * Online Save Game * Game Center and Cloudcell integration, multiple profiles * Wide range of control options * HUD with minimap that can be turned on or off * 5 camera angles including fully 3D cockpit view, and TV style replays * Powered by Firemint’s exclusive Mint3D™ engine From PocketGamer...
(Rob Murray) I think our fans will be very pleased with the game. We have done everything we can to take the Real Racing experience to a whole new level and the game is more fun, more engaging, better looking and larger than ever. We have built upon strong foundations with Real Racing, so all the way along the mantra was "don’t lose the magic". I think we have found a whole new kind of "magic" in Real Racing 2.Real Racing 2 will be available from 16th December, this week, for just $9.99.
Yay!
It's been a long, long road, but Real Racing 2 is finally out and we couldn't be happier with the reception is getting :D Pocket Gamer gave us a Platinum Award and 10/10 rating, we're doing really well in the top grossing charts (in the top 5 in US, Aus, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy) - and to top it all off, Apple has just picked Real Racing 2 as its Game of the Week! Everyone at Firemint has worked incredibly hard to make this happen, it's an amazing game and an absolute credit to the guys. I reckon it was also a pretty damn gutsy move from Rob to fund a title this big. Well done, everyone :)
If you want to check it out, you can get Real Racing 2 from http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/real-racing-2/id386568787?mt=8 ;)
Alex
(Comms Mgr @ Firemint)