10 Million Downloads Later, Doodle Jump Makes the Leap to the iPad

The iPhone has already made millions for Igor and Marko Pusenjak. Time to see what the iPad can do.

The Pusenjak brothers are the guys behind Lima Sky, which is the company behind Doodle Jump, one of the breakout hits at Apple’s iTunes store. Since March 2010, they’ve sold more than 10 million copies of the simple and addictive game for the iPhone and the iPod, at 99 cents a pop.

Subtract Apple’s 30 percent take and that means the brothers have cleared more than $7 million from the game. And since they’ve kept their overhead very, very low, they’re likely keeping the majority of that.

Now they’re finally trying out the iPad, with an app that should hit the store later today. Like just about every other iPad port, this one will cost more than the original, but it’s still going to be a relatively modest $2.99. And just about everything else in the game remains the same: Igor Pusenjak tells me that the game has new graphics created specifically for the iPad’s bigger screen, but during my brief tryout this afternoon, I was hard-pressed to see any big differences. Still plenty of fun, though.

I’ve got a soft spot for the Pusenjaks, but I think their “little guys make it big” story would appeal to just about anyone. I also think it’s important for Apple to make sure that it gets to tell new versions of these stories from time to time, for obvious reasons. (The brothers have also started selling a version for Google’s Android platform.)

Here’s a (long) interview I conducted with Igor Pusenjak inside his New York City apartment in April 2010, the first weekend that iPads became available. As I recall, he was disappointed when I showed up, because he thought I was the UPS guy bringing him his new toy. I didn’t take it personally, though.