PopCap toasts Bejeweled's 25m sales

PopCap says the 25m sales also add up to over 6 billion hours of gameplay, thanks to updated information from distribution partners "that’s 684,000 YEARS - the equivalent of 60 people playing the game 24 hours a day since the last Ice Age 11,400 years ago," the firm says.

The franchise, which includes Bejeweled and Bejeweled 2, has become ubiquitous across a variety of channels, including online sales and retail. PopCap said that its distribution partners include mobile, hotel room entertainment systems and in-flight channels too. The games have been seen on a variety of formats, including Web, PCs and Macs, mobile phones, Xbox and PlayStation consoles, PDAs and Blackberrys, iPods and iPhone.

Over 350 million copies of Bejeweled/Bejeweled 2 have been downloaded from online portals, which accounts for nearly a third of the one billion-plus downloads of all PopCap titles. The company added that 'tens of millions of copies of Bejeweled have been installed on mobile phones worldwide' and 'more than 25 million units of the game have been sold across all platforms (amounting to over $300 million in consumer spending over the history of the game)'.

The game has also done the business at retail - here in the UK Bejeweled 2 is also available in over 30 UK retail stores including ASDA, Borders, Currys, Game, PC World, Woolworths.

All that - and at first PopCap had found the game rejected by traditional publishers back when PopCap were pitching the game in 2000, the company revealed.

“Considering we tried to sell Bejeweled outright to more than one industry giant back in the early days of our company, and got no takers even after reducing our asking price to $60,000, this little game has done all right for itself,” said Jason Kapalka, chief creative officer and co-founder of PopCap, and the original designer of Bejeweled and its sequel.

“I vividly recall prospective buyers telling us ‘It’s not even a game,’ while showing us the door."