Outfit7’s Talking Friends series of apps has reached one billion downloads.

Seriously. The talking cat apps that feature characters like Talking Tom, later expanded out to a host of other characters, have been downloaded over one billion times. That’s an absurd number of downloads, and the series continues to look upward and outward, as it continues to expand from just being an entertaining toy app to something more substantial. I spoke to Outfit7 CEO Samo Login about this milestone.

148Apps: Did you ever imagine that you’d ever get anywhere near this point, getting one billion downloads with your apps?

Samo: I would say that when we started, that was one of our objectives. It sure seemed a lot with seven billion people in the world, but we didn’t set any limits where we should stop. So far, we have doubled the number of downloads every half-year, roughly. I spoke to a guy [recently], he can see us getting to two billion, but four billion would be a challenge! [laughs] I don’t think so because we are introducing new apps, so I don’t see a problem with four billion, so, why not?

148Apps: What is it about the Talking Friends series of apps that you think has led to this kind of success versus some of the other “talking cartoon-y character” apps that are out there?

Samo: I think that our objective was always to create something funny, and we invested always a lot into quality [with] all these apps, not only the graphics but the whole user experience. And I think that users notice that. It’s something that for sure, always differentiated us from other companies that had created talking apps.

We also plan in the future, always, some kind of hidden educational aspect, especially for preschoolers. If you create an app that’s a straightforward educational app, the kids can smell it. It’s like when you teach a child something, if you just cover it up into something funny and entertaining, the kids will have fun and learn about something at the same time. That’s the added value that we intend to give our users with our apps in the future.

148Apps: So really with your apps and going forward in the future, you’re really trying to use the likability and the familarity of these characters to branch out into other kinds of apps, but to also have, maybe to say, positive goals to them?

Samo: Well, we learned about our characters that we were lucky from the beginning. I wouldn’t say we have actually planned it. It’s pure luck that we have picked up Tom and later characters that are easily lovable, and people can really connect to. So we already developed a series of webisodes in partnership with Disney, and a couple of music videos also in partnership with Disney Records, and our audience really loves them. The webisodes have over one hundred million views on Youtube, and the music videos also.

So obviously our audience wants all different kinds of entertaining content, not just the Talking apps. And for sure, we’ll be working in this direction in the future to create different kinds of apps, mostly with entertaining but also some gaming content to bring our characters into movies, music, merchandise, to increase the number of touch points are audience has with our characters.

148Apps: So this is something where you’ve taken this simple idea of, this kind of talking cartoon character that people can interact with, and now you’re bringing it to all sorts of new avenues, taking it to places that seem unexpected with the launch of the original app, but here you are.

Samo: I would say ‘unexpected’ when we started, then when we saw the power of our characters that with big distribution we’d compete with TV, with one billion downloads of our apps, and over 170 million monthly unique users, we actually compete with TV stations. And with apps, it’s much easier to get to a global distribution, than with any other technology before. So we are taking this from here, expanding this into other verticals, which is in my opinion, a logical next step. We didn’t expect it at the very beginning, but later on we became aware there is much more behind our characters than just talking apps.

Terraria, the breakout PC and Xbox 360 game from Andrew Spinks, is a 2D side-scrolling retro-pixel game that takes a ton of inspiration from Minecraft, with a fan following almost as big.

If you’ve played the console or PC version, you’ll recognize the iOS version immediately. It will be a universal app, and the dev team wants to add Game Center and iCloud support to allow you to play across the devices seamlessly. They also hope to add local Wi-Fi multiplayer support in a post-launch update.

Here’s a quick video to spark your interest.

NASCAR Red Line, from Eutechnyx is a light management and reaction game where you manage a racer through a series of races. Combining elements of a sports management game and reaction game like CSR Racing into a new type of racing game. NASCAR Red Line should be available this summer.

I dropped by the IndieCade area in the South Hall of the LA Convention Center today at E3, and saw a bunch of cool looking, upcoming iOS and Android games. Each developer was on hand to show off their games, letting me tap and swipe my way around in their digital worlds. Here are three of the best that I saw at the show today.

Moro is a puzzle platformer game with a little robot that needs to get through each level. The catch? You’ll need to move stuff around, activate panels, and open doors to make that happen. It’s a neat mash up of a couple of addictive genres. Moro should be out soon for iOS and Android.

Forsaken Planet is out now on Android and PC, coming soon to iOS, the developers assured me. It’s a fun, colorful, multi-player shooter, and you’ll want to play it now. Check out the video below, and be sure to visit them online.

Greg Lobanov was on hand to show off his deceptively simple shape matching iOS game, Perfection. He schooled me on how to best slice the initial shape, which is procedurally generated, so you’ll never run out of puzzles to solve. Later levels include scale and rotation in the mix.

And last, but surely not least, is Luxuria Suburbia, an erotic iPad game that includes lots of rubbing, touching, and tapping. The developers weren’t on hand to demo it properly, but the Spaceteam dev stepped up to give a…hand. Check out the first level in the Vine video below.