You may remember playing Tetris on the Elektronica 60 back in 1984, no? Who am I kidding, most of us first played the massively addictive puzzler on the Game Boy during the late 80s and early 90s.
Whilst the title found huge popularity on Nintendo’s handheld, Henk Rogers, co-founder of The Tetris Company, has revealed mobile platforms are to thank for the game’s ultimate success.
Speaking with Venture Beat, Rogers initially spoke on the amount of downloads Tetris has had since becoming available on mobile outlets, ranging from early mobile phones right up to today’s iOS/Android smartphones and tablets:
“We have 425 million total paid mobile downloads. That’s all just on mobile. We had 35 million on the original Game Boy. Boxed products, I think all together we sold something like 70 million.”
When asked if people are still interested in Tetris, specifically on smartphones and tablets, Roger said:
“Yeah. We’ve had to change the game. The original game was controlled with a keyboard, and now it’s a touchscreen game. That fundamentally changes some things. But it’s still doing fine.”
2014 stands as the 30th anniversary since Alexey Pajitnov designed and programmed the very first Tetris – Pajitnov is also a co-founder of The Tetris Company alongside Rogers.