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Why a digital King is crushing it in the casual gaming biz

Paddy Hirsch Feb 18, 2014

King Digital Entertainment makes the popular and addictive “Candy Crush Saga” smartphone game. And Tuesday the company said it would parlay that success into an initial public offering — of up to $500 million on the New York Stock Exchange. But if you thought “Candy Crush Saga” was the only bullet in King’s revolver, think again:

  1. In the last decade, King has created 180 games.
  2. The company’s most popular games, aside from “Candy Crush Saga,” are “Pet Rescue Saga,” “Farm Heroes Saga,” “Papa Pear Saga” and, my own personal favorite, “Bubble Witch Saga.”
  3. Together, those games account for 248 million daily game plays. (“Candy Crush Saga” accounts for 1,085 million daily game plays.)
  4. “Candy Crush Saga” has been the highest-grossing game app on iTunes, Facebook, and Google Play, but the company’s other games have hit No. 5 on iTunes, No. 3 on Google Play, and No. 4 and No. 7 on Facebook.
  5. In December 2013, an average of 128 million daily active users played the company’s games more than 1.2 billion times per day. That means if just 10 percent of users paid $1 a day to get to the next level of the game (or whatever), the company would have booked nearly $13 million a day.
  6. King made a $568 million profit in 2013, up from $8 million in 2012. That’s profit, not earnings. Peck on that, tweety bird.

 

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