While Nintendo posted a stark financial report for the last fiscal year earlier today, another studio is reporting massive successes. King, the developer of games such as Candy Crush Saga, has tripled its number of daily users from last year, and saw great financial success in the last quarter.
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King is reporting a $606.7 million revenue for the first quarter of 2014 alone (the first three months of the year), generating gross bookings of $480 million in that period. The developer of popular mobile games also increased its user base by a huge margin, with 143 million active daily users last quarter.
The jump in revenue compared to the first quarter of 2013 represents an increase of $422 million, or 193 percent. It's also an increase of $9 million over the fourth quarter of last year, which is only a 1 percent growth rate. King is extremely pleased with the results according to a statement accompanying the report.
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"We are pleased with our first quarter 2014 results and are executing on our plan to build a strong portfolio of games," said Riccardo Zacconi , CEO of King. "Our existing titles are performing well, and with the strong performance of Farm Heroes Saga following its January mobile launch, we had three games in the top 10 grossing games list on all major platforms for the first quarter.
"With the massive reach of our player network, our existing portfolio of highly engaging games, and our development plan for additional games well underway, we are well-positioned for gross bookings growth and diversification in 2014."
King is undoubtedly doing well, and has opened its seventh studio in Germany. It remains to be seen if there's a ceiling to their success, and whether hitting it will result in an abrupt decline in the developer's fortunes. We've seen it before with Zynga, who over-extended its rapid success and fell into a very difficult financial position, which it's slowly turning around. Hopefully for its future, King has planned to prevent a climate that will lead the company finding itself in a similar situation.
