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King claims 70 million daily active players, Pet Rescue Saga coming soon to mobile
King, which used to be called King.com it pulled a name change at GDC this year, has announced that it has 70 million daily active players, which is a crazy number. By far, King's biggest title is Candy Crush Saga. The company notes that the game has 15.5 million active players on Facebook every day. Candy Crush Saga is also a big hit on iOS, where it consistently appears in the top charts for both most downloaded and top grossing. King also announced its intention to bring Pet Rescue Saga to iOS. That game has 6 million daily players on Facebook, and King says it will be the third saga game (along with Bubble Witch Saga) to make the leap to mobile platforms. Pet Rescue Saga will arrive on both iOS and Android later this summer. King's success is just phenomenal. It's impressive for any form of media to reach 70 million people, and for that to happen daily is just crazy. This casual games market can blow up overnight and shrink just as fast (just ask Zynga), but for now, King is doing impressively well.
New Zynga titles struggle, analysts call for increase in daily active users
Zynga's two latest games, Hidden Chronicles and the iOS-only Scramble With Friends, have failed to accumulate the same daily active user (DAU) totals as two of the social giant's previous releases, Castleville or Empires and Allies. This spells big trouble for the company's trading value and future growth, at least according to a report released by financial analysis group Cowen and Company. Hidden Chronicles' 12 day post-launch DAU total of 710,000 is well below the over 5 million DAU figure reached by Empires and Allies and Castleville during their first 12 days of existence; similarly, Scramble With Friends has failed to penetrate the Top 20 barrier on the App Store. Historically, Zynga's DAU totals peak 3 months after a game has been released (according to the report), and while it's possible that both Hidden Chronicles and Scramble With Friends could slowly acquire a larger user base, there's nothing in Zynga's statistical history to make that extremely plausible. Now, 710,000 daily users sounds like a ton of people, but Zynga has set the bar so high that it's not enough to keep the company's overall growth even: "The quarterly rate of DAU decline for Zynga's titles that are at least three months old has averaged 18.4 percent per quarter for the last two years," explained Doug Creutz of Cowen and Company. "Assuming Zynga averages a 20 percent quarterly rate of decline for titles beyond their launch windows in 2012, the company must add 9-10 million DAUs per quarter from new games just to keep total DAUs constant." So basically, any game Zynga releases in 2012 has to achieve at least 5 million daily users in order for the company's user base to break even. In other news, Zynga has constructed a super-sonic ultra-high-altitude aircraft to recover the bar it's accidentally set for itself in the exosphere.
Backflip Studios reports 20 million active monthly users
When the news hit earlier this month that Zynga had purchased iPhone developers Newtoy (after Ngmoco and Tapulous were also purchased this year), I immediately joked on Twitter that we should make odds on which iPhone developer gets acquired next. In all seriousness, however, Backflip Studios is actually a pretty good candidate to be acquired by a larger company. I heard Julian Farrior speak at GDC earlier this year, and Backflip shows all the signs of a healthy, growing developer: quite a few solid apps, lots of ways to generate revenue and a healthy knowledge of how to make apps popular and profitable. Backflip has one more juicy plum a prospective investor might want to pull: 20 million monthly active users. Backflip is also claiming 2 million daily active users in its apps, and it's reportedly making over half a million dollars a month in ads alone. Farrior is a big fan of multiple revenue streams, though, so paid apps are probably a nice source of income for the company as well. Farrior also says Backflip is porting popular titles to iPad and the Android platform, and the company has some big plans in store for 2011. Of course, as with all successful app developers on the App Store, the question is if Farrior even wants a partner in development. Lots of small studios that are doing well on Apple's platform probably aren't interested in bringing another partner on. But some of the investors shopping the App Store have some pretty deep pockets, and when a big traditional game publisher comes along offering a big check, lots of experience and infrastructure for marketing and development, it's hard to think that a studio like Backflip wouldn't be tempted.
