{"id":14337,"date":"2012-03-27T13:30:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T13:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/?p=14337"},"modified":"2012-03-27T13:30:52","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T13:30:52","slug":"disney-club-penguin-has-more-mobile-plans-in-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/2012\/03\/disney-club-penguin-has-more-mobile-plans-in-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Club Penguin Has More Mobile Plans In The Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via an article published on <em>Adweek<\/em> today, Disney has given some (vague) input about Club Penguin and the mobile industry. Here are some main points the article highlights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rather than bring Disney characters into Club Penguin, they are brining Club Penguin characters into the real world<\/li>\n<li>More than 30 million Puffles were adopted in 2011<\/li>\n<li>Club Penguin has over 175 million registered users, up from 150 million. However,\u00a0as of December 2011, Club Penguin\u2019s U.S. traffic year over year dropped 16 percent to 2.9 million unique visitors and fell 31 percent versus 4.2 million domestic uniques in December 2009. (which other virtual worlds and online games for kids, etc only dropped slightly compared to that)<\/li>\n<li>Disney claims that Club Penguin is the most popular virtual world for kids. But &#8220;kids are definitely more interested in playing on smartphones and tablets,&#8221; said Verna. &#8220;So the world has moved on, and Disney does not seem to have caught up when it comes to gaming.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Important quote: <em>&#8220;Disney said it has an aggressive mobile road map for Club Penguin but declined to reveal details of its plans. Chris Heatherly, Disney\u2019s vp of product development and franchise, responded in an email: &#8220;We continue to invest in new technologies and content that make Club Penguin a fun and safe place for kids to play online. We understand the trends with kids and digital play, and wherever kids are, we will be. We have a lot of surprises in store this year.&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I wonder what it is they have planned? Full article is below for your reading pleasure if you are interested:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>When Disney acquired kid-centric virtual world Club Penguin in 2007 and social gaming company Playdom in 2010, many industry experts expected the company to use its intellectual property to grow those businesses. That hasn\u2019t necessarily been the case.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe benefit to each of those companies in being owned by Disney is that you can take [Playdom\u2019s expertise in social gaming and Club Penguin\u2019s in kid-focused virtual worlds] and exploit that competitive advantage you already have by taking really great iconic brands and leveraging them. And they haven\u2019t been able to do that yet,\u201d said Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Pachter\u2019s criticism isn\u2019t lost on Disney. Last year, \u201cwe didn\u2019t merge those two thingsparticularly well together,\u201d said svp of social games John Spinale, referring to Playdom and Disney content and character franchises. He added that he doesn\u2019texpect the missed opportunity to be the story line for 2012, however.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>For roughly a year, Playdom has been developing Disney Animal Kingdom Explorers, a hidden-object game in the vein of Playdom\u2019s top hit, Gardens of Time, which is based on Disney\u2019s Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando, Fla., and will debut on Facebook in early April. Coupled with Marvel: Avengers Alliance\u2014launched earlier this month, but which Playdom had been developing preacquisition\u2014Explorers makes for the second of three new Playdom titles this year to integrate with Disney brands.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Rather than bringing Disney characters into Club Penguin, Disney has been more focused on cross-pollinating the virtual world\u2019s brand throughout the company. Popular character Captain Rockhopper has been mingling with Disney World visitors alongside Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck for years, and more than 30 million Puffles (pets for users\u2019 penguin avatars) were adopted last year. Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer, said Disney has \u201cclearly put a lot behind building [the Puffle] brand\u201d but that it hasn\u2019t captured the zeitgeist like, say, an Angry Birds. That app\u2019s popularity gets at a larger struggle facing Club Penguin.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Disney boasts that Club Penguin has more than 175 million registered players, up from more than 150 million. But as of December 2011, Club Penguin\u2019s U.S. traffic year over year dropped 16 percent to 2.9 million unique visitors\u2014and fell 31 percent versus 4.2 million domestic uniques in December 2009, per Nielsen. Meanwhile, sites in Nielsen\u2019s kids\/games\/toys category collectively shed just 4 percent and 9 percent of U.S. traffic, respectively, in the same periods.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Disney claims that Club Penguin is the most popular virtual world for kids. But \u201ckids are definitely more interested in playing on smartphones and tablets,\u201d said Verna. \u201cSo the world has moved on, and Disney does not seem to have caught up when it comes to gaming.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Disney did roll out the Puffle Launch app for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices last year. The company said the app hit No. 1 in the Apple App Store\u2019s kids\u2019 category in 45 countries. Meanwhile, Josh Martin, svp and group director of media strategy at ID Media, said the company didn\u2019t sufficiently promote the app because \u201cI don\u2019t think it took hold to a strong degree.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Disney said it has an aggressive mobile road map for Club Penguin but declined to reveal details of its plans. Chris Heatherly, Disney\u2019s vp of product development and franchise, responded in an email: \u201cWe continue to invest in new technologies and content that make Club Penguin a fun and safe place for kids to play online. We understand the trends with kids and digital play, and wherever kids are, we will be. We have a lot of surprises in store this year.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This seems very interesting and I am very curious as to what Club Penguin has planned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via an article published on Adweek today, Disney has given some (vague) input about Club Penguin and the mobile industry. Here are some main points the article highlights: Rather than bring Disney characters into Club Penguin, they are brining Club Penguin characters into the real world More than 30 million Puffles were adopted in 2011 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cheatswhiz.com\/clubpenguin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}