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Activision Blizzard Buys 'Candy Crush Saga' Developer King Digital for $5.9 Billion
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HA! This game already is dead. Does anyone avidly play Candy Crush any more? That's a lot of money, what a waist! I think there are a lot of hungry and homeless people that could have made better use of that kind of money. Our society has done gone stupid!
OMG, Activision has some seriously stupid board members. Apple looks really smart now for purchasing Beats. At least there's a chance of Apple making a ROI, not so sure on this one. This reminds me of HP buying Compaq, AMD buying ATI, and more recently Microsoft buying Nokia. Good for the owners/investors of King Digital, bad for the employees of both companies...
I've never played Candy Crush but isn't this just Tetris / Bejeweled except instead of paying $10 once and playing it forever, you have to keep paying to level up?
I feel like most kids would be happy with a Game Boy Color with 2-3 games. I guess they'd lose multiplayer but it seems like a way cheaper option for parents.
I feel like most kids would be happy with a Game Boy Color with 2-3 games. I guess they'd lose multiplayer but it seems like a way cheaper option for parents.
Well they obviously bought them for the team, not the current game portfolio. It basically means, that Activision wants to understand/learn how to make money in the freemium world from one of the best teams in that regard. Pretty good acquisition in that sense .. not sure about the pricepoint though.
Don't worry, Activision will find a way to ruin the game and either make you pay to play or you'll quit.
This is the result of "If I got a buck for every time some fecker sent me an invite for Candy Crush on Facebook" ....
Not saying I agree it's the best move, but keep in mind, they paid that much for the whole company, not just Candy Crush. They make a lot of other games.
I participate in micro transactions for games I enjoy. I've never paid a dime for Candy Crush but I've spent money on other games such as Dungeon Boss etc.
In app purchases are meaningful when they enable permanent functionality that mirrors physical life. For instance , board games where an expansion can be purchased.
I agree that the typical freemium model is absurd. I play Real Racing as much as it lets me play for free. But when you have to pay $100 for a single car I refuse to give them a dime. The economics are hideous and I refuse to provide any financial support.
Exactly. I think a lot of people aren't realizing that this company has a suite of games, not just Candy Crush. They have a bunch of Candy Crush spin-offs, including Soda Crush. They also have the Witch games, which involve "popping" things. At one point in history, I've probably tried most of their titles. I never really enjoyed them, and disliked the monatization model that they use in most titles. You are capped at how much you can do per day/time, unless you pay (like many other games), and the game purposely gives you poor sets of candies to make you fail over and over, or pay to get the next level/buy additional candy and stuff.
These games are destined to fail. There isn't any new content. They produce new levels, new mechanics at the levels, but ultimately are all the same. It's much like tetris or bejeweled. Furthermore, as more and more games flood the mobile market, they have nothing that sets them apart. There aren't crazy graphics, the gameplay is repetitive, the concept is simple enough, but lacks anything new.
I feel that these games feed off of the addition that people get when they start playing. A niche of players fork over hundreds monthly on mobile game micro transactions, and that's probably what is paying King Digital's bills. When those addicted players finally find another game or reality (which one comes first?), they will stop playing, and the revenue will significantly drop.
I haven't spent a dime on any of King's games, but I can see why people eventually do. However, people will grow bored, and eventually move on. I mean, how many people still really play their titles? I feel that the amount of people actively playing King's games have been severely cut with the insane amounts of new mobile games on the market. When King started working with Candy Crush, things on the mobile market space were quite different. Nowadays, the connect-3 puzzle games are in the thousands, with none really having any significant mark in the genre. Furthermore, all use similar transactional models as King. Unfortunate, at best.
Wow, Rite Aid just got bought by Walgreens for ~$9 billion. We're talking about a profitable company, the third biggest pharmacy chain in the US with nearly 100,000 employees, 4,600 brick and mortar stores, billions in inventory. Revenue of $26B/year. And Blizzard just paid roughly 2/3rds of that value for a company that made the flavor of the week bejeweled knock off, $2B in revenue and is already in decline and scrambling to diversify with more apps like soda crush... I can't imagine what could go wrong here.
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It may look as though nothing could go wrong to you, but I would say that Blizzard's purchase is risky, as there are so many games in the App Store. To have another hit like Candy Crush must be difficult.