Looks like mobile gamers were glued to their iPhones during the holidays. Aurora Feint shared data today that showed games with its OpenFeint social gaming network saw five times the normal user activity and three times the normal sales during the Dec. 24 to Dec. 26 holidays.
OpenFeint is Burlingame, Calif.-based Aurora Feint’s platform that developers use to add multiplayer challenges, leaderboards and other social features to iPhone games. That helps the games spread faster and get more repeat usage. More than 650 iPhone games use it and OpenFeint has seven million users.
These numbers show that players are increasingly engaged with their iPhones. That’s good for Apple, and not so good for those who want to unseat the iPhone. The apps which have generated the most new OpenFeint accounts are Tic Tac Toe, PocketGod, A Christmas Santa, iFishing, Rollercoaster Rush Free, StickWars Lite, Fish Food Frenzy Free, XenoWars, Finger Physics, and Slime Ball Lite.
During the holidays, 11 million high scores were submitted and two million achievements were submitted. This goes to show that spending time with the family during the holidays is overrated. Of course, since these are social gaming stats, it could be that iPhone families gathered to play together.
OpenFeint’s rivals include Scoreloop and Ngmoco’s Plus+ platform.