iPhone Savior: iPhone Developer: One Month, Half A Million Dollars Richer

It was only a month ago that we reported on iShoot developer Ethan Nicholas, who's debut iPhone game rocketed into the number one spot in the iTunes App Store, as both the Top Paid and Top Free application. iShoot has only recently settled into the number six paid spot after spending 26 consecutive days on top since January 11, surpassing iFart Mobile which held the top spot for about 22 days.

I contacted Ethan to track his progress since quitting his full time employment with Sun Microsystems after iShoot reached number one. To date, his tank artillery game has sold 320,000 units, netting Nicholas well over 600K dollars, while his free version of iShoot Lite has been downloaded in excess of 2.4 million times since it went live on January 3rd. Of that number about 13% decided to pay $2.99 for the iShoot app, averaging $23,000 a day in profit after Apple takes their 30% cut. An impressive pull with the App Store hosting over 20K titles to date.

I imagined by now that Ethan Nicholas would be cruising around in a slick new car while lighting expensive cigars using $100 bills. That's simply not the case according to Ethan, who was genuine in defending his modest lifestyle.

"I haven't changed my lifestyle at all. I'm living as modestly as I was before iShoot took off," Nicholas told iPhone Savior by phone. "My car is a 15 year old piece of crap with 140K miles on it and I'm gonna drive it until it falls apart."

I was curious to learn what kind of iPhone games have the gravitas to catch Ethan's attention. He quickly pointed to "I Love Katamari" ($7.99) and "Fieldrunners" ($4.99) as two immediate favorites.

"Katamari is a game I believe deserves to be number one,” said Ethan, "The Fieldrunners game is so well put together that it puts me to shame. The developers should be proud of the work they've done there."

I asked Ethan if he's designing any new games and inquired about future iShoot updates. He was only willing to reveal that his new game concepts will be fully 3D and are already fairly well mapped out. iShoot takes up most of his mind share lately as he readies version 2.0 which he hopes to launch in a couple of weeks. iShoot 2.0 will be updated to Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for online game play as long as your on the same Wi-Fi network. That news is certain to cause a buzz among iShoot fanatics.

"My goal with my new games is to reach number one by creating incredibly awesome games. I'm not going to produce shovelware," Ethan said.

iShoot 2.0 will take a big leap forward by allowing users to create their own weapons from scratch, edit all of the games rules and even decide how much money is allotted per round. That's only a few of the surprises planned for this epic update.

Ethan humbly admitted that he's far from rich, citing that it could be several more weeks before he sees the big bucks from Apple. But when that wire transfer does finally hit his bank account, it will be over a half million dollars. Not bad for a debut.

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