New Star Soccer 5 surpasses 1m downloads on iOS

Mobile sensation New Star Soccer 5 has been downloaded more than one million times on iOS.

In an interview with our sister publication Develop, the game’s developer Simon Read said the free-to-play version of the hit game had also garnered almost 600,000 in-app purchases.

430,000 users had purchased the career mode for 69p, whilst a further 150,000 had made other in-purchases worth as much as 9.99.

The Android version meanwhile, which costs 1.99, has been downloaded just 40,000 times, 30 times less than its iOS counterpart.

Read said that not making the Android port of the title free-to-play was a big mistake”, and said all of his future titles would now likely follow the free pay model.

It’s doing well on Android, it’s been top five in the paid charts, but it’s still nothing compared to top ten on iOS,” said Read.

Whether that’s purely down to things like piracy and free-to-play or it’s more to do with the amount of people that are actually using iPhones compared to Android phones I’m not sure.

But the fact is I think going free-to-play is definitely the future for my next project and future games.”

As well we the mobile versions, monthly plays through the Flash enabled browsers had reached three million plus, whilst total registered PC players stood at more than 240,000, with 5,000 active monthly players.

Despite having released the game on multiple platforms, and currently looking at a Vita port, Read said he won’t be porting the game to consoles.

"As things like PlayStation, console and Xbox go, probably not," said Read.

"I think the iPhone will completely burn away every other platform, so that will be the main focus of the future."