If Angry Birds has taught us anything, it’s that as long as video game characters are good and drink their milk, they’ll grow into a marketing machine that sells T-shirts and toys. And today, our little Crossy Road has blossomed into a product line of its own.
The Frogger-like mobile gem Crossy Road now has its own product store online, where you can get items emblazoned with game’s brand and characters. The store is just T-shirts for now, so you can don a top that features the logo of developer Hipster Whale or the Emo Goose avatar. With more young people playing games on phones and tablets, the merchandising route is a more viable option for games that find large audiences on those platforms — and Crossy Road is taking advantage of that.
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Angry Birds was able to generate a huge portion of its total revenue from merchandise because it is so popular with children. Likewise, Crossy Road has also found an audience that includes younger people.
So now Crossy Road has a new way to capitalize on its popularity and aesthetic appeal. Its visual style is one of the reasons so many people enjoy it and turned it into a top-grossing app in the first place. And people can now express their love for that by buying a T-shirt or two.
Hipster Whale has already made more than $10 million from Crossy Road, and it has surpassed more than 90 million downloads for the game worldwide. And as the studio moves on to its next project — Pac-Man 256, a clever update to the Pac-Man franchise that incorporates an infamous bug from the original game — it can keep squeezing dollar bills from Crossy Road in ways that go beyond the screen.