Tapulous churns out Tap Tap Revenge Dave Matthews Band iPhone game

It’s time to get out your tapping finger again, as Tapulous has just released Tap Tap Revenge Dave Matthews Band game for the iPhone.

You may not care about this game. But there are a ton of iPhone users who probably do. And it’s interesting to watch Tapulous and how it manages the iPhone’s first bonafide mega-hit entertainment property. The company has a killer game on its hands, and it’s milking it for all it’s worth, releasing a new version just about every month.

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The Dave Matthews Band version is the latest in a series that is turning into a franchise on the fledgling iPhone platform. It just launched for $4.99 on the AppStore. This is the fifth paid version in the series.

The games are sort of like Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero for the iPhone. They make use of the touch screen and the accelerometers which respond to shaking.

So far, hundreds of thousands of paid versions have been sold in the series, said Bart Decrem, chief executive of the Palo Alto, Calif, company.

“The goal is to give people new versions with the music they love,” Decrem said in an interview.

Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge games held the No. 1 rank in the App Store for a long time, a big feat considering there are more than 10,000 games on the iPhone. On any given day, a million games are played. More than 100 million games played. There are more than 10 million games installed on iPhones. The free game has 203 songs and it has a new featured song every week.

Tap Tap Revenge was released way back in July 2008. That’s ancient by iPhone standards. Tap Tap Revenge 2, meanwhile, ranks No. 27. Roughly a third of all iPhone users have it, more than any other app, according to comScore.

Decrem credits the community networking features of the game for its lasting power. Decrem says the top player plays the game more than 2.5 hours a day.

Tapulous has also released music games based on Nine Inch Nails and Cold Play albums. The company was started by Decrem, Andrew Lacy and Mike Lee in 2007. Lee left in August, 2008. The company has 13 employees and has raised almost $3 million from investors including Andy Bechtolsheim, Marc Benioff, Rajeev Motwani, Katrina Garnett, Rob Theis and Jeff Clavier. We’ve previously covered the company here, here, and here.

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