Burger King revealed last week that it experienced a 41 percent increase in its second-quarter profit, which the fast food giant is directly attributing to the immense popularity of its cheap, branded Xbox 360 games. Talk about striking a major blow for branded console games, eh?
For those not in the know, last year Burger King released three games for the Xbox 360 that were sold for $3.99 when customers purchased a BK value meal. The games, which included a racing game, a bumper car game, and a stealth game where players have to sneak up on unsuspecting hungry folks and feed them, feature Burger King characters and allow players to play against each other over the Xbox Live multiplayer service. (The picture to the left is from the somewhat creepy “Sneak King” game, where a player is about to stuff a much needed Whopper down an unsuspecting woman’s gullet)
Over the holiday season, more than 3.2 million of the games were sold, putting them on par with popular real video games like Gears of War (which has sold about 3 million). I’m going to go ahead and guess that, without even factoring the value meals that were sold in connection with the games, the game sales, which come out to about $13 million, more than make up for the games’ development costs.
And who says advertising in games doesn’t work?
Burger King didn’t really elaborate on exactly why the games were so successful, but their availability at approximately one-fifteenth of the price of most Xbox 360 game titles, coupled with the multiplayer aspects (which drastically increase replay value on them), probably had something to do with it.Â
