Clumsy Ninja Finally Hits App Store

Phil Dzikiy, writing for iLounge:

Clumsy Ninja, which was featured in last year’s Apple media event for the fifth-generation iPod touch and iPhone 5, has finally made its way to the App Store as a free download. One of two high-profile game demos from Apple last year — the other being Infinity Blade Dungeons, which was shown at the third-generation iPad event in March 2012 and later canceled — Clumsy Ninja’s release was delayed for more than a year without explanation.

If you scored an onstage demo at the September 2012 introduction of the iPhone 5 and don’t ship the app for another 14 months, I think you deserve a non-sarcastic finally.

I think one of the few truly weird things about Apple today is how they occasionally pick obscure third-party products to demo in their high-profile events. Clumsy Ninja looks like a cool game, but why would Apple choose them to demo if it wasn’t soon going to ship. And remember Anki, the toy race cars at the WWDC keynote this year? How’d they get picked?

Update: Whoa, check this out — Clumsy Ninja’s entry in the App Store has a video preview instead of static screenshots. So not only did they get an onstage demo a year ago, this year, they get to launch a major new App Store feature. (Thanks to Neven Mrgan.)

Update 2: In a recent TV interview with Bloomberg, Anki co-founder and CEO Boris Sofman, when asked how they got picked to be on stage during the WWDC keynote, said “One of our investors introduced us to Apple, and originally we started talking about being in their stores, but they got excited about the product and how we were using their product ecosystem.”

★ Thursday, 21 November 2013