Aiming beyond 700M downloads, PlayFirst launches Diner Dash Rush on mobile

Gamers can’t get enough of Flo, the fast-moving waitress of Diner Dash. So PlayFirst is launching Diner Dash Rush on iOS as the latest version of a game series that has been a casual-gaming juggernaut.

Diner Dash has generated more than 700 million downloads for San Francisco-based game publisher PlayFirst since the first title launched in 2004. The game helped pioneer the category of casual games and became a hit across a variety of platforms. But the newest, Diner Dash Rush, is debuting first on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

The time-management game, where you have to juggle orders for food in a diner, has evolved and now Flo is a restaurateur and entrepreneur. Success depends on strategies like color-matching, chaining tasks, and managing customer types. If the player pleases enough VIP customers, they can advance to Happy Hour, where disco lights drop and a bonus session ensues.

“When we built Diner Dash Rush, our goal was to create the fastest Dash experience ever,” said Marco DeMiroz, the president and CEO of PlayFirst. “We’ve taken all the core elements that make the Dash series so entertaining and dialed them up with a competitive twist to make Diner Dash Rush the most exciting time management game ever.”

Diner Dash apps continue to be popular and they’re a big reason why PlayFirst has more than 11 million monthly active users. The app is available for free today.

Here’s the trailer.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Jsv6S1uNuZo]

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.