SuperData’s March 2014 digital games market update shows slowing growth for Candy Crush and a rising focus on ‘core’ gamers from the industry.
Yet, as the old truism goes, correlation does not imply causation.
The focus on the core gamer in the digital market comes largely from PC and console titles like Titanfall or Heroes of the Storm, but SuperData also included Blizzard's Hearthstone in this list - which is interesting as it just snuck onto the App Store for iPad on 16 April.
Hearthsone, Blizzard’s strategic CCG, launched for PC and Mac in mid-March and has since generated an ARPPU of about $27 according to SuperData's findings. Whether or not it can match that figure with its iPad release remains to be seen.
Sour candy
SuperData's findings also suggest that King's cash cow, Candy Crush Saga, has topped out despite seeing a modest (1.2 percent) improvement in overall spending month-over-month.
Its monthly active users, however, show “signs of saturation” with marginal growth (0.3 percent) reported for mobile while social players declined by 2.1 percent.
Despite this less-than-stellar figures, Candy Crush still ranked as SuperData’s #2 mobile game for March - falling in line behind Clash of Clans.
SuperData also pointed out that, overall, the digital games market continues to grow, reaching $936 million in sales in March 2014, up 9 percent year-over-year.
[source: SuperData]