A 'killer application' (commonly shortened to 'killer app'), in the jargon of technologists, has been used to refer to any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs.
Examples
One of the first examples of a killer application is generally agreed to be the VisiCalc spreadsheet on the Apple II platform.<ref>D.J. Power,
''[http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html A Brief History of Spreadsheets]'', DSSResources.COM, v3.6, 8 August 2004</ref>
The machine was purchased in the thousands by finance workers (in particular, bond traders) on the strength of this program.<ref name=„cacASU“>
"Killer Applications" (overview), Partha Dasgupta, [[Arizona State University]] in Tempe, AZ, May 2002, webpage: [http://cactus.eas.asu.edu/partha/Columns/2002/07-01-killer-app.htm ASU-killer-app].</ref>
The next example is another spreadsheet, Lotus 1-2-3. Sales of IBM's PC had been slow until 1-2-3 was made public, and then increased rapidly a few months after Lotus 1-2-3's initial release.
A killer app can provide an important niche market for a non-mainstream platform. Aldus PageMaker and Adobe PostScript gave the graphic design and desktop publishing niche to the Apple Macintosh in the late 1980s,date=November 2007 a niche it retains to this day, despite the fact that PCs running Windows or Linux have been capable of running versions of some of the same applications since the early 1990s.
The term has also been applied to computer and video games that cause consumers to buy a particular video game console or gaming hardware. An example of a killer application is Star Raiders, released in 1979 on cartridge for the Atari 8-bit computer. Another „killer app“, Space Invaders, was released in 1980 and quadrupled sales of then three year old Atari 2600 platform. The VCS became a sell-out over Christmas. Sonic the Hedgehog was also hailed a killer app for the Sega Genesis. The Game Boy saw Tetris, and the Nintendo 64 saw much success with the releases of GoldenEye 007, Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. The original Playstation revitalized the RPG genre with Final Fantasy VII. Grand Theft Auto 3 was a killer app for the PlayStation 2. The XBox saw the groundbreaking first-person shooter Combat Evolved
