King.com’s Candy Crush – Crushes Zynga as Top social-mobile game.
When we think of mobile gaming, one usually thinks: Zynga, Kabam, Gree, Disney, EA, ..but King? Never really heard of them (kidding). As noted earlier by the folks over at VentureBeat:
AppData has recorded that the DAU (Daily Active Users) for King.com’s ‘Candy Crush Saga‘ was an astounding 9.7 million while FarmVille 2 was behind by close to 1M at 8.8 million DAU. Texas Holden Poker (also by Zynga) had 7.1 million. As far as MAU (Monthly Active Users) Zynga still dominates with FarmVille 2 being at 41.8 Million, Texas Holden Poker at 35.2 million and Candy Crush Saga just above 1/2 (with 5M MAU) at 25.8 million.
If you haven’t played this game, let me tell you – it’s suitable for all ages, and the simplicity is what makes it so great. You could say it’s similar to bewjewled (where you match three jewels together) – but with candy, and on steroids.
CEO Riccardo Zacconi has this to say on the signifance of their DAU #’s:
“We’ve seen tremendous growth on social and mobile,”
“Candy Crush Saga is doing well everywhere. We use our existing user base to launch our new games, and that helps each game grow bigger than the last one.”
King.com has indeed been creeping up on Zynga over the last year and a half and their users now play 5 BILLION game sessions a month (up from 3 Billion just months ago). Despite the mobile success of King.com’s games they still launch their games via the web and on the social network platforms (facebook) first. After tweaking the gameplay and monetization they then take only the best of their titles over to iOS and Google Play.
While this may seem questionable, it’s actually a brilliant idea and obvious to the every-day marketer or strategist who knows that having more data can drive better decision making. This very formula has helped boost their revenues from ads in social games more than 10X in 2012.
Candy Crush Saga having been the company’s most popular game on facebook had it’s debut on the App Store’s in mid November and according to Zacconi found,
“People are playing their games on mobile devices even more than they have on their computers,”
“This complements our ‘play everywhere’ strategy.”
On the advertising side of things, King.com has also attracted some of the biggest brands around: Macy’s, Nestle, T-Mobile, Samsung, Procter & Gamble. They’ve seen an incredible 85% completion rate for incentivized users who start watching videos. Key markets for King.com are women ages 22-55.
If that wasn’t enough, Candy Crush Saga is in the top 5 grossing apps for iPhone and iPad in 10 different countries. Candy Crush Saga is also the 3rd game in the facebook’s top 10 game apps.
To conclude, head of european gaming partnerships at facebook Julien Codornio said,
“In less than 18 months, King.com has become the second largest game developer on the Facebook platform with 70 million monthly active players. They also built what is the most popular game on Facebook right now: Candy Crush Saga, a game played by almost 10 million people every day, on Facebook.com and on mobile. Only a few technology companies in the world have reached so many people so quickly.”
Kevin is an Online and Mobile Marketing Strategist who has worked with companies of all sizes over the last 6 years. You can follow Kevin on any of the social platforms below.
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