Outfit7's Talking Tom Cat 2 Saw More Than 1 Million Downloads in a Single Day

Outfit7, the Slovenian developer that's aiming to become a toy company on the order of Mattel or Hasbro through talking character mobile apps, said its latest release Talking Tom Cat 2 did more than 1 million downloads in a single day this week. On Sunday, the company surpassed 1 million downloads globally on iOS, while yesterday came in just under that at around three-quarters of a million downloads, the company's chief executive Andrej Nabergoj tells us. In total, the app's been downloaded 2.58 million times since its launch four days ago on May 27. These figures exclude Android, where the company also has a big presence with 14 titles, two of which have seen north of 15 million installs. It helps that the company has already acquired a base of users after passing a cumulative 100 million downloads a month ago and is growing at roughly 20 million downloads a month. So when the company launches a new title, it does heavy cross-promotion through its existing suite of talking character apps. "Talking Tom has become a big brand that people know," Nabergoj said. "The quality of this app is much better than anything we've done before and I think people were curious to see what it was like." The app monetizes through an in-app purchase of a $0.99 upgrade pack for Talking Tom, which gives him and a pesky neighbor dog Ben extra behaviors and gets rid of ads. Outfit7, in general, has paid and free apps. Talking Tom is free in this case, because it's a character the company wants to blow out and make into widely-known IP. Nabergoj has told in the past that he sees mobile devices and tablets as the next great platform to build characters that are universally beloved by families and children on the order of Mickey Mouse or SpongeBob SquarePants. The company has been working on recruiting a team of people in the San Francisco Bay Area to help break its characters into other mediums such as physical toys, books or movies. Talking Tom, along with a cranky dog named Talking Ben and a third unlaunched character will form the core set of IP going forward. Nabergoj says he considers previously launched character apps to be more like beta testing apps. Outfit7's more recent launches have had much higher quality graphics and animations compared to the company's initial apps. The company's now designing all of its characters from scratch instead of licensing drawings or animations from artists. "We originally bought characters online, but now we've been trying to make huge steps in storytelling," Nabergoj said. Outfit7 hasn't raised external funding to date.

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Outfit7's Talking Tom Cat 2 Saw More Than 1 Million Downloads in a Single Day

Kim-Mai Cutler

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