Even though King Entertainment, the company behind all the Sagas and the Crushes, is often the example people use to describe how F2P companies make crazy amounts of money, its latest earnings report has raised some eyebrows and caused King Entertainment’s shares to tumble significantly. First, the good news. King’s revenue came in at 570 million dollars, above expectations of 555 million. The company now has 550 million monthly active players, up from 481 million during the first quarter of fiscal 2014, and 158 million daily active players. All of these numbers are a record for the company, so when it comes to number of users, King Entertainment is doing great.
And now for the bad news. First of all, the bookings (economic benefit from the sale of items or the purchase of access in a game) are forecasted to decline to about 490 million dollars in the second quarter. This decline reflects a significant drop in the number of unique players who actually spend any money on King games, a drop from 11.86 million to 8.52 million. While the paying customers actually spend more now than they spent in the same period in fiscal 2014 (an average of $24 compared to $18), the increased average spending isn’t enough to make up for the significantly-smaller number of paying customers. As a result, King’s shares were down as much as 11% today, a huge hit for the F2P company. What do you think about this news? Is King losing to the likes of Supercell, or is this drop an omen of changes being afoot in the App Store?
And apparently mobile gaming is the future?
I'm seeing two different 2022's right now.
The article suggests that a probable cause is Supercell (clash of clans) growth.
So for people who hate P2Win games this is still bad news.
Or just don't play them, and try not to think about them. Works for me.
:)
Bad news?
Hopefully this decline is a rapid avalance so that premium games get more attention.
I was thinking the same thing.
Well said and totally agree. I see this more like a good news than bad. Premium deserve way more attention than they currently should. If the pest are not clean out, the environment will never be clean safe and healthy. So you know what are the pest I am referring to here.
I know, right? Anyone bring the champagne? This is cause to celebrate!
That's what happens to "whale" hunters. It's always fun and games at first, until players get smarter and don't want to waste their money.
Exactly!Greed destroys,period.
You're talking about a company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars off of games that are practically free to make compared to a AAA game.
They're somewhat cheaper to make initially, but they are live services that take a lot of server space and staff to run and constantly create more content for. It's just a different business model that better mitigates upfront financial risk than AAA game development. I'm not saying it's better, just that you're looking at the costs incorrectly.
Maybe people got finally sick of dropping thousands of dollars into mini-games.
Tasos , are you a financial analyst or something?
Well, he's certainly not a writer.
Nice!
Zynga 2.0. They stumble into making a game lots of people play (for some reason) and then once those people get bored and stop spending money they have no idea how to make another one.
there is a lot of other factors regarding the troubles Zynga has been having.
They have battle nation to fall back on since they brought the company that used to make it. Yet they been putting there eggs all in one bucket and now no one wants to buy any more....
Mobile gaming is over saturated and probably heading for a crash. Gaming has always been a cyclical industry going from boom to bust back to boom.
In the words of Megatron; "Fall...fall !!"
You sir win the interwebz.
Save the Whales!
Good.
Time to sell short on +500 yay
Again--I've stated this over and over in numerous threads: Be on the lookout for a wave of incredible Premium gaming in the near future. It's about to hit big, like it did in the JetCar Stunts/Aralon: Sword And Shadow/Real Racing 2/Space Miner days. It's coming, thank the gaming gods.
Actually my theory is that there are net less payers so less money going around for all. Between the amount of free gaming you can get on the platform and the amount of quality stuff ppl already have in their library, there is very little that compels people to buy the next game. Or even dl one
Everyone hates these free to play games because of the pay to win, but I would rather play a free game that sucked than play a 99¢ game that sucks
I'd rather play a game that doesn't suck :)
People should pay for what they like. If .99 is a risk for you to buy a game then you need to stop playing. Free does well because tons of people download & end up paying once they like it. What I think will help the premium world is more of them to be free to download & try a few levels with a Full Unlock IAP. Then "our good friends" who aren't willing to risk a dollar on a potential game can download, then buy if they like it.
I was all into the free + IAP to unlock the full game until I realized that Gameloft removed Sacred Odyssey from the App Store and it won't let me restore my purchase to unlock the full game. Had I bought the paid version, which they came out with *after* I already unlocked the game in the free one, I would still be able to play the game I paid for. :/
So 570m revenue, 550m active monthly users, so assuming thats constant over the year and ignoring non-IAP revenue etc. if someone was active over a year on average they spend $1 (probably less)? So on average, not too bad.
About 530m players play for free each month? Those who do pay average $24, ok, some will pay a lot more-I think swrve said 64% of revenue from 0.2% of players based on the 200 games they work on so there's whales about...
So, even though all the constant attempts to get you to pay are annoying, seems half a billion people are ignoring it every month!!
sorry...think the numbers were quarterly not yearly...so $4 a year average not one...
Anyone thinking this is the beginning of the end is fooling themselves. This has less to do with people being tired of freemium and more to do with an aging ip, competition, and King overestimating themselves.
I know common sense is rare as hen's teeth here, but use it a little once in awhile, it'll do you good.
Yes, this. The whales have had their way with Candy Crush, and if they don't make yet another game-as-fad to grab all of their attention again, they're going to make less. Honestly, I don't know why they went public - their business strategy doesn't seem to fit with a growth model.
Maybe people are sick of the In app model, restricting game play and the crazy ads that spam gamers. I think gamers will slowly move back to paid games where the know what they're getting. Good article Tazos.
To all the people popping champaign and celebrating, maybe you missed the part where King made 15 million dollars MORE than was expected. I'd say this giant boil on our collective asses is not going away any time soon. 😟😭