Inside Social Games

It’s the end of another year folks, and with the coming holidays it means parties, food, drink, gifts, resolutions, more food, and, of course, reflections on the time that has past. With that spirit in mind, and since the iPhone has been a rather interesting space for social games lately, it is only fair to see how social games are doing on the iPhone charts. Apple has been gracious enough to make this easy by releasing the Top 10 iTunes App Store Downloads of 2008.

There are a number of categories to look at, but what is of most interest here is the overall applications and the games (of course). If, however, you are interested in the other categories, MobileCrunch has a nice compilation of all of them.

Coming in at #2 in overall paid applications is the title, Texas Hold’em.  The accomplishment gives Texas Hold’em a great badge of honor and greatly displays the popularity of such card type games. Many of the other top 10 paid apps overall are games as well.

Top 10 Paid Apps (Overall):

1. Koi Pond
2. Texas Hold’em
3. Moto Chaser
4. Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D
5. Super Monkey Ball
6. Cro-Mag Rally
7. Enigmo
8. Pocket Guitar
9. Recorder
10. iBeer

Top 10 Free Apps (Overall):

1. Pandora Radio
2. Facebook
3. Tap Tap Revenge
4. Shazam
5. Labyrinth Lite Edition
6. Remote
7. Google Earth
8. Lightsaber Unleashed
9. AIM
10. Urbanspoon

That brings us to the Top 10 lists for the games category itself. So how did social games do?

Well, no surprise, after seeing the overall charts,  Texas Hold’em hits #1 in the paid category. As for free games, we find a familiar company: SGN. Popping in at the #4 position is the ever so talked about iBowl application that turns the iPhone into a Wii-like remote. This motion based game lets players go through the motions of actual bowling and most certainly went over well with the public (so long as they didn’t look too strange playing it, and didn’t drop their phone in the process!).

Top 10 Paid Games:

1. Texas Hold’em
2. Moto Chaser
3. Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D
4. Super Monkey Ball
5. Cro-Mag Rally
6. Enigmo
7. Air Hockey
8. Bejeweled 2
9. Flick Bowling
10. Line Rider iRide

Top 10 Free Games:

1. Tap Tap Revenge
2. Labyrinth Lite Edition
3. Sol Free Solitaire
4. iBowl
5. Pac-Man Lite
6. Touch Hockey: FS5
7. Cannon Challenge
8. Audi A4 Driving Challenge
9. Sudoku
10. reMovem

Although 2 social games broke into the top 10 lists on the iPhone this year, it’s encouraging to see just how many games are succeeding on the iPhone platform - particularly paid apps. We’re looking forward to 2009, as the social infrastructure of the web and mobile web gets increasingly mature.