Epic Games’ and developer Chair’s hack-n-slash mobile game Infinity Blade is a pretty big success, and now we know exactly how big of a success it is.
Epic has sold over 11 million copies of Infinity Blade and Infinity Blade II on iOS devices, according to CNN Money. These games combined to generate over $60 million in revenue.
Infinity Blade and Infinity Blade II are still exclusive to the iOS App Store and sell for a premium price of $6 and $7, respectively. It’s one of the standout premium games in a market overflowing with free-to-play titles.
The franchise isn’t just a success as a game, either. Author Brandon Sanderson wrote an e-book the links the story of the first two games titled Infinity Blade: Awakening. He released it in October 2011, and it debuted at No. 1 on Apple’s iBooks store. It is still on the best-seller chart in the fantasy genre.
Sanderson just released the second book based on the franchise titled Infinity Blade: Redemption. It just went live on iBooks last Tuesday and immediately shot to the top of the charts.
In an interview with CNN Money, Sanderson explained that his working relationship with Chair enables him the freedom to riff on ideas for the Infinity Blade universe that the studio may then use in the next game.
“The characters that I added in the [first] book became main characters for the game, and Chair extrapolated that and took things in a direction and tossed story back to me for the second book,” Sanderson told CNN Money. “At the end of Infinity Blade II, they left the characters in this terrible situation, and I had to deal with that. We brainstorm on all of this stuff, and we work together, but it’s been a blast to see how what I do for a book influences what they do for a game and then to be influenced by that to make the next book.”
Epic and Chair aren’t talking about the future of the Infinity Blade franchise. Epic previously had a different studio working on a new game in the series called Infinity Blade: Dungeons, but it cancelled that project in 2012.