Tag: candy crush saga

Zynga shares dropped while King reported quarterly results that were better than expected.

Unlike the popular “Candy Crush Saga” developer, King Digital Entertainment, which experienced better quarterly results than were expected, Zynga, the creator of the farming simulation social game, “Farmville”, is struggling to keep up with its competition, due to its failure to catch up with the recent mobile gaming growth during the latest quarter, reported the New York Post.

King’s Candy Crush games topped the mobile download lists for multiple months last year.

After extended trading, last Thursday, King Digital’s shares skyrocketed by as much as 20%, gaining 4.2%, to $14.74, by the close. Meanwhile, Zynga’s shares plummeted by as much as 11% in the after-market, following a 5.3% decrease, to $2.66, during the regular session.

Part of Zynga’s shares declined after it was revealed that the social game services provider is closing development offices in China. According to Zynga, this will save the company $7 million, annually, but will also cut 71 jobs.

In addition to reports of its mobile gaming success, King announced its purchase of Z2.

The creator behind the world-famous match-three puzzle video games, said that it will be acquiring Seattle startup, Z2, a game developer which has had success with its freemium turn-bases strategy video game, Battle Nations. King purchased the U.S. company for $45 million and as much as $105 million of additional payments for future performance targets.

Unlike King, Zynga has struggled to make the transition to mobile gaming with its popular games, like “Farmville”, which was initially designed for a social network platform, several years ago.

However, all might not be lost for the struggling company. Its “New Words With Friends”, a Scrabble-like game, has been gaining popularity. A fourth-quarter update revealed that the game had a 35% monthly audience increase.

For 2015, Zynga is aiming to make mobile gaming 75% of its overall business. The company said last Thursday that every new game it introduces this year, will be “mobile-first”. It is expected that the company will release anywhere from six to 10 mobile games, and among the new titles include “Empires & Aliens”, “Dawn of Titans”, and “Farmville: Harvest Swap”.

Rovio’s most popular app could now be taking on Candy Crush as it jumps into a new game category.

When it comes to the mobile gaming industry, Angry Birds continues to hold its position among the most popular app series in the world, but at the same time, it isn’t even approaching the financial successes that are seen by puzzle based options such as Candy Crush Saga.

The Angry Birds developer has now decided to that its mobile games will be closer to Puzzle & Dragons.

Rovio has not been blind to the match-three puzzle style mobile gaming apps and it has now soft-launched two new games in the Angry Birds series that have dumped their traditional bird slingshot style play for, yes, themed match-three puzzles. Angry Birds Fight! has now been made available in Thailand, while Angry Birds Stella Pop! is available to Canadian downloaders.

Mobile gaming developers have been using single country debuts as a type of standard for testing their apps.

The mobile app developers use these single country releases to be able to refine their new games before they are ready to launch them worldwide. According to recent reports from early downloaders, the style of the newest Angry Bird match-three puzzle games is that of “freemium” applications, in which they can be downloaded and played for free, but where there are in-app purchases for virtual items available to players who want to enhance their experience.

The Angry Birds Fight! version of the game involves having to match three or more birds in a line in order to be able to combat enemies – somewhat similar to the highly popular Puzzle & Dragons game from the GungHo Online app developer based in Japan.

On the other hand, the Angry Birds Stella Pop! is more comparable to the Puzzle Bobble (also known as Bust-a-Move) console classic bubble popping game, or to the more recent mobile gaming app from King (maker of Candy Crush), which is called the Bubble Witch Saga. This move will be a defining one for Rovio, which still holds onto considerable popularity with its Angry Birds app, but that has been watching that popularity slide since late 2012.