UPDATED 15:05 EDT / JANUARY 18 2013

NEWS

Candy Crush Saga Beats Zynga’s Top Game Titles on Facebook

It was all about Zynga’s social games last year, when Farmville and Cityville were on our minds. But wait, here comes the brand new winner of the race–King.com, whose social mobile game–Candy Crush Saga has broken all the records of popularity. Beating out Zynga’s top titles–FarmVille 2 and Texas HoldEm Poker–King.com’s Candy Crush Saga has 9.7 million users. On the other hand, FarmVille 2 has 8.8 million and Texas HoldEm Poker has 7.1 million users.

Though Candy Crush is a relatively simple game, where you match three pieces of candy together in a fast-action, arcade style game play, it managed to gain huge momentum. But if we talk about the monthly active users, Zynga still has the top games with FarmVille 2 at 41.8 million and 35.2 million for Texas HoldEm Poker, while there are only 25.8 million for Candy Crush Saga.

“Still, the daily active user count is significant because it means more when it comes to monetization of users. 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,” said Riccardo Zacconi, the chief executive of London-based King.com

Besides, according to market research firm AppAnnie, Candy Crush Saga is listed in the top five grossing iPhone and iPad apps in 10 of the top markets. Launched in April 2012, the game is played over 55 million times a day across both Android, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. Not only this, King.com is running ad campaigns in its social games that have attracted major brands such as Samsung, Procter & Gamble, Macy’s, Nestle, and T-Mobile, and the click-through rate on King.com’s ads is more than 5 percent.

It has been a rough time for Zynga for quite long, and this latest news has done nothing, but added to its woes. Back in December, it announced that 11 of its least popular titles are either barred new players or have been shut down entirely. The move was a part of a broader initiative orchestrated by founding CEO Mark Pincus to cut costs and invest more in the company’s more profitable games. The shutdown brings down the total number of Zynga games on the market to 30, including its mobile apps and titles on Zynga.com, MySpace and other social networks. Though Zynga’s Pokey is the third most profitable game on the iPhone list, but the company has virtually no presence in the paid tablet market, a status it may seek to change in the coming months.


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