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Google’s 2014 search data analysis has crowned cult smartphone hit Flappy Bird and the internet’s king of gaming in 2014.
Overall Flappy Bird was the year’s most searched game followed by online Threes clone 2048, FIFA 15, Destiny and Titanfall.
Flappy Bird searches peaked on February 9th while Destiny enjoyed the second largest peak, despite finishing fourth overall, on September 7th.
Flappy Bird searches were most popular in the Philippines, followed by Vietnam, the UK, the US and New Zealand. 2048 attracted the most interest in Iceland, Armenia, Georgia, Tunisia and Mongolia (really) while Destiny searches were led by the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, the UK and Australia.
Regarding Destiny searches, the term ‘PS4 Destiny’ was searched for twice as much as both ‘Destiny Xbox’ and ‘Xbox One Detiny’.
A game made in a weekend topped the most expensive one in history,” Google said. After seven years in development, Destiny made record sales upon its release. Although it was the most expensive game ever made, it was outdone in searches by 2048 and Flappy Bird – games made by one person in no more than three days.”
Google also noted a trend toward what it described as retro games, naming FTL: Faster Than light and Shovel Knight. It also pointed out that card games were more searched for than mobile games and that ‘toys’ was searched for over three times more than ‘console’.
In the tech arena, iPhone 6 topped the searches followed by Samsung Galaxy S5, Nexus 6, Moto G and Samsung Note 4.
