Revenue for Candy Crush Saga maker King fell $5 million to $529 million in Q1 2019 despite growth in the company's monthly active users.

Mobile accounted for the vast majority of sales at $496 million, which was actually up from the $490m reported the year prior. PC sales meanwhile accounted for $33m, down from $43m.

Operating income for the division also fell by $13m to $178m, giving an operating margin of 34 per cent. In its financial report, parent company Activision Blizzard put the decline down to marketing investments in Candy Crush Friends Saga, though the drop in PC revenue appears to have had an effect.

Monthly active users for King were up quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year to 272 million. The company claimed that Candy Crush Friends Saga was attracting both former and new players alike to the franchise.

Across the entire Candy Crush franchise, daily player time reached a record high of 38 minutes. The publisher also noted that for the 22nd quarter in a row, King had two of the top 10 grossing games on US mobile app stores.

Overall sales

Revenue for Activision Blizzard’s overall ‘mobile and ancillary’ business came in at $535 million, with Blizzard contributing $38m and Activision $4m, on top of King's $496m.

For the publisher’s entire business revenue down $1.83 billion, down from $1.97 billion the year prior. However, sales for the current quarter still beat forecasted sales figures by $110 million.

Operating income for the quarter fell from $595m the year prior to $570 million.

Activision Blizzard’s Q1 results are the first since it revealed it was cutting eight per cent of its workforce despite record revenue in 2018.

At the time of that announcement in February, the company said it was restructuring to focus more on development.

The cutbacks had a big impact on King, which pulled out of North America development altogether to focus on its European operations.