We are used to seeing auctions of some old units of the iPhone, some even selling for amounts of money higher than what a Tesla can cost you. They are units in their box, sealed, of the original models that were launched in 2007.
But there was a more modern iPhone that managed to sell for almost 100,000 euros, a record sum. An iPhone 5S no less, and the reason is not that it was unopened or that it had some manufacturing defect that made it unique. The reason why it came to sell so expensive was a game.
It’s been almost ten years since that happened, and it was one of those events that demonstrated the impact a game can have on the App Store. In spring 2013 appeared a game called flappy bird, that you will remember if you have been with us for a while. The game, created by Dong Nguyen, had a simplicity and addictiveness that hooked millions of people.
In fact, the game died on its own success: it generated tens of thousands of dollars in revenue a day for its creator, but he himself said that “ruined his simple life”. And for that reason, Dong removed Flappy Bird from the App Store in February 2014. From then on, every iPhone with that game installed became highly valuable.
And one of those iPhones was the iPhone 5S that ended up auctioning off for almost $100,000 on eBay. It wasn’t the phone itself, but rather It was the game I had installed. Because once you uninstalled it, it was impossible to recover it. He vice it was too strong to be abandoned like this, and some were willing to pay a lot of money to continue playing it.
I doubt we’ll see anything of this caliber again. The last similar phenomenon that I remember is that of Pokémon Go in its beginnings, which caused veritable avalanches of people in the streets. Now the game still exists, but without causing the same sensation as before. The ads and subscriptions model present right now makes it much more difficult to have these types of hits.Although who knows… nothing is impossible.
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