NaturalMotion’s My Horse hits 7m downloads

NaturalMotion has reaped the rewards of the booming app market – its free-to-play game My Horse has been downloaded over 7m times.

The free iOS game puts gamers in charge of maintaining and caring for a realistic horse – with an in-game currency available to those wanting to spend more on their pets and progress. The game launched in September.

My Horse boasts NaturalMotion’s trademark quality animation – before opening up a dedicated games development studio, the firm was best known for its Develop Industry Excellence Award winning character motion graphics tools such as Euphoria, Endorphin and Morpheme.

The mix of free-to-play and high-end graphics clearly has its appeal – the 7m download figure has pushed NaturalMotion to be ranked as the 12th largest iOS publisher in the US.

NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil told Develop: "We’re particular pleased that we’ve achieved this ranking with only one game. 2012 should be really exciting as we have a packed release schedule coming up."

He added: "My Horse is a sign of things to come: free-to-play games that are 3D and with high production values.

"Giving people rich, believable experiences – instead of the usual 2D isometric gameplay – allows games to stand out from the crowd and drive substantially larger download numbers and revenues."

An extended interview with Reil will be published in the next issue of Develop, out towards the end of January.