• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Activision Blizzard purchases King.com (Candy Crush Saga) for $5.9 billion

BeforeU

BeforeU

Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
statham said:
had no idea they had that much dough sitting around for this. Is this from off-shore accounts?
Click to expand...

Why do people think you need liquid cash to acquire a company. There are so many other ways to go with.
 
R

Ridley327

Member
Nirolak said:
Bobby kept talking about how it wasn't worth investing in until games in the market were making $1+ billion a year or whatever, and then when they did, they were way too late to break into the market despite many efforts trying.
Click to expand...

Where are most Hearthstone players on? I'd assume PC, but given Blizzard's big push onto mobile for the game, I can't imagine that those players aren't a good chunk.
 
D

Doctre81

Member
So apparently Candy Crush makes about 1.5 billion a year. It's gonna take them years to even make their money back.
 
D

Diggeh

Unconfirmed Member
Geez, that's insane. Incoming new Candy element to every Skylanders game from here on out. Here, Activision, let me get you started on some characters:

1) Lolly Plop
"Lick out below!"

2) Chalk Lit
"Lights! Camera! Chalk!"

3) Gum Bell
"For chew the bell tolls!"

4) Sour Puss
"Pucker up!"
 
B

Bronetta

Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Doctre81 said:
So apparently Candy Crush makes about 1.5 billion a year. It's gonna take them years to even make their money back.
Click to expand...
It's not just the revenue. Activision also got all the R&D data. Apparently King was pumping big amounts into that.
 
M

Megasoum

Banned
They just paid 1.9BILLIONS more than what Disney paid for the whole Star Wars IP for a free to play bubble company.
 
V

vinnygambini

Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
This acquisition surely would have never passed if Vivendi were still the largest shareholder.

Do we know how Activision is going to finance the deal?
 
F

FiraB

Banned
Just mindblowing, whoever thought that was a smart decision but...

I+would+take+it+and+then+burn+it+_ff353fabb415147cbc1aeb2254dc7a37.jpg
 
AmuroChan

AmuroChan

Member
I'm sure Activision has very smart business people on staff, but I'd like to know how that $5.9B valuation came about.
 
C

Calm waterfall

Banned
That's a huge amount of money. Smart long term investment though. I wonder why they did not make a LOL mobile game. It would have made bank.
 
KyanMehwulfe

KyanMehwulfe

Member
not surprised by the amount but actually a bit surprised that King sold...

suppose they're having trouble genuinely surpassing CCS so if you can make a genuine sequel then you look at branding...

so, Warcraft mobile puzzle games inc? got a lot of IPs they can have now that since maybe CCS 2 doesn't make as much sense as Warcraft x CCS or Skylanders x CCS
 
N

Novel Mike

Member
Why that much? I completely understand wanting to buy the company and its worth a lot but Activison is paying this much for King a mobile developer...

When Disney paid 4bil or something like that for Star Wars

and Microsoft paid 2.5 billion for Minecraft...

What.The.Hell?

They have to know something we don't right? Like Candy Crush 2 with the most fucked up microtransaction system ever or something right?

I do not understand.
 
T

True Fire

Member
Does King have any assets that are actually unique and valuable (on the scale of Star Wars)? All of their Saga puzzle games can easily be cloned (and have been cloned—hell, King's games were all plagarised in the first place). The next big thing has probably already been released on the App Store. We just don't know what it'll be yet.

I just can't see Candy Crush surviving the decade, and spending 6 billion dollars on a giant bubble is a massively irresponsible move.
 
statham

statham

Member
BeforeU said:
Why do people think you need liquid cash to acquire a company. There are so many other ways to go with.
Click to expand...

I'm old school, when I see they bought so and so for 6 billion, I would expect one bank account -6billion, the other +6billion.
 
4

4Tran

Member
NOLA_Gaffer said:
Whoa.

Is this more or less surprising than Microsoft buying Minecraft?
Click to expand...
I think that it was fairly well known that Mojang was looking for someone to buy them out, so this acquisition would be more unlikely. However, both moves make a lot of sense given their respective circumstances. Moreover, while the moves look somewhat similar, they're designed to accomplish very different things for the acquiring company.
 
V

VariantX

Member
The hell? Please tell me king has another mobile game that's burning up the charts or they're working on a new IP right now. Candy Crush is on its way out. They could have just opened up several studios of their own for far less.
 
B

Bronetta

Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
gundamkyoukai said:
Plus user base which is what they really after .
Click to expand...
Bingo.

People here calling this a bad deal aren't looking at the whole picture. Activision got a lot more than a "bejeweled clone" and $1+ billion revenue per year from this purchase.
 
4

4Tran

Member
True Fire said:
Does King have any assets that are actually unique and valuable (on the scale of Star Wars)? All of their Saga puzzle games can easily be cloned (and have been cloned—hell, King's games were all plagarised in the first place). The next big thing has probably already been released on the App Store. We just don't know what it'll be yet.

I just can't see Candy Crush surviving the decade, and spending 6 billion dollars on a giant bubble is a massively irresponsible move.
Click to expand...
King has an in into the mobile market, and Activision was willing to pay big bucks for that. I would imagine that they made this decision after trying repeatedly to get into mobile and failing.
 
F

Floody

Member
Fuck me, isn't that close to what Star Wars and Minecraft was bought for combined?

I knew it was big, but not that fucking big. Well it'd be pretty bad if this blows up in Activision's face.
 
K

KorrZ

Member
I feel that in retrospect this is going to be seen as a big mistake.

That's an insane amount of money and the mobile business at least from what I've seen isn't really attached to studio names so in general just because they have one successful product doesn't mean their next will be a hit at all.
 
U

Usobuko

Banned
See this 2015 Q2 results.

King Digital Entertainment PLC posted a 28% drop in net profit in the most recent quarter, as revenue from its three-year old Candy Crush Saga game continued to decline.

The Swedish company reported net profit of $119 million, or 38 cents per share in the second quarter, down from $165 million, or 52 cents a share in the same period a year earlier. Revenue fell 18% to $490 million.

King blamed the lower profit and revenue on the weakening performance of its hit signature game but said it would keep investing in it.

“Candy Crush is here to stay,” chief executive Riccardo Zacconi said in a telephone interview. “We work on continuous innovation, adding levels, and new gameplay elements.”

King earned its crown as the mobile game industry’s leader by number of users when it launched the Candy Crush Saga game on cellphones and tablets in 2012. The game, in which players have to match candies by colors, has consistently been a big money spinner, generating nearly 40% of King’s gross bookings—a gauge of future revenue-in the second quarter, and hanging firmly to the top of charts. But the success of Candy Crush Saga is also King’s Achilles’ heel, some analysts say, amid concerns that the aging puzzle game is losing popularity amongst players.

“Nothing has really lessened the dependence on Candy Crush substantially,” said Tero Kuittinen, managing director at Magid Associates, a media consultancy.

King’s reliance on the Candy Crush franchise was reinforced last year when the company launched Candy Crush Soda, a derivative of the Saga game. The company’s efforts to diversify its revenue base, with new products such as Alphabetty Saga, a word puzzle game, have yet to bear fruit.

It’s trying other formats.

King released Paradise Bay last week, a game in which players can test their farming skills, picking cotton and managing a coconut grove.

One week after its launch, the game has climbed to number 22 of highest grossing games on the U.S. iPad stores, according to app-tracking firm App Annie
Click to expand...

I really don't think this is worth it for Activision. King always struck me more as Rovio and Zynga.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

King celebrates Candy Crush Saga’s 15,000th level and $20B in revenue
Business Sales-Age
12
1K
Dick Jones replied
  • Locked
Sony Really Is Concerned About Microsoft's Xbox Strategy Following the Activision Blizzard Buyout
7
2K
Flutta replied
[Bloomberg] Xbox Talking to Partners for Mobile Store, CEO Spencer Says
News Business 2
80
6K
Heisenberg007 replied
FTC Seeks to Block Microsoft Corp’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard
31 32 33 34 35
2K
126K
//DEVIL// replied
Phil Spencer interview - Says that their intent is for all Xbox games, including Call of Duty, to be available on Xbox Game Pass Day One
2 3
102
8K
Kenneth Haight replied
Top Bottom