Lilt Line ‘needs double sales for Nintendo pay’

Nintendo will not pay royalties to the developers of Lilt Line unless sales double, the game’s original creator has said.

UK mobile studio Different Cloth released Lilt Line in 2009 on the App Store, before US outfit Gaijin ported the code to WiiWare in the US.

Nintendo doesn’t pay its WiiWare developers unless certain sales targets are met. In the case of Lilt Line, sales will need to double, Different Cloth said.

And, in what should be a warning to game developers eager to join the mobile games race, Different Cloth has also revealed sobering sales figures for Lilt Line on smartphones.

The game, which has been praised by consumer games press outlets such as Edge, has shifted less than 4,000 units on the App Store since its 2009 release.

The App Store title “has remained pretty steady at £1.79 and $2.99”, said Different Cloth boss Gordon Midwood.

“You can probably work out by yourself that I’m not a millionaire,” he added.

“So far the Wii version has sold 3,756 copies in the US. If we don’t get past a threshold around twice that in America, Nintendo will never pay us anything”.

Midwood said he will take a cut of royalties for the WiiWare edition is sales targets are met. Now Lilt Line is launching in the UK, where a separate and similar threshold will need to be met.