Premium-priced mobile series The Room blows past 5 million units

Newsbrief: Premium games don't sell on mobile? Tell that to Barry Meade, co-founder of Fireproof Games. In less than two years, his studio's The Room horror adventure franchise has racked up 5.4 million sales total. Today, he tweeted that figure, alongside news that The Room 2 alone has racked up 1.2 million sales since December -- this despite the fact that the Android version of the game launched just last month. The Room and its sequel are currently both 99 cents on iOS; The Room 2 is still launch-priced at $2.99 on Google Play. In his tweets, Meade spoke about his studio's success in the face of much of the conventional wisdom about the mobile space. His attitude stems in part, no doubt, from the background of Fireproof's co-founders, who met while working at console development studio Criterion Games. It's also notable that the original The Room was selected as Apple's Game of the Year for 2012 and also won the 2013 Game Developers Choice award for best handheld/mobile game, showing that Meade's professional peers appreciate his attitude, and his game, too. You can read Meade's tweets here:

1/5 Okay so premium games on mobile don't sell, so we keep getting told by the investor/marketing wing of the industry...

— Barry Meade (@Fireproof_Barry) March 6, 2014

2/5 Well today Fireproof received word The Room Two has sold 1.2m. Combined with The Room we're at 5.4m sales over 14 months...

— Barry Meade (@Fireproof_Barry) March 6, 2014

3/5 Yet this all happened without Fireproof spending any money on marketing or PR or analysts or analytics...

— Barry Meade (@Fireproof_Barry) March 6, 2014

4/5 We had no experience of mobile, we made it up as we went along, our game wasn't a service & we believed in gamer word of mouth...

— Barry Meade (@Fireproof_Barry) March 6, 2014

5/5 Point? Dunno. But maybe what mobile games needs is less databollocks and more devs who believe in gamers & what gamers want

— Barry Meade (@Fireproof_Barry) March 6, 2014

6/5 Who cares if f2p games're making zintrillion$ if they're barely games at all. Gamers need a space on mobile & only we can create it

— Barry Meade (@Fireproof_Barry) March 6, 2014