Candy Crush Friends Saga Stacks Up 10 Million Downloads in Its First Week

King's latest saga made more than 10 million new friends in its first week of global availability, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence reveals. Candy Crush Friends Saga spent more than a year in soft launch before releasing worldwide on October 10, making it the first new Candy Crush sequel since Jelly Saga debuted in January 2016.

In the seven days since, Friends Saga managed to amass about 77 percent of Jelly Saga's 13 million first week installs in close to the same number of countries, and about 71 percent of Soda Saga's 14 million. The game reached No. 1 among all apps on the App Store in 36 countries and Google Play in 22 countries on October 13.

The first week of global release saw a wider gap in revenue between Friends Saga and its fellow Candy Crush spinoffs, with the title grossing approximately $780,000 across both platforms, compared to the $1.7 million and $3.7 million players spent in Jelly Saga and Soda Saga, respectively, during their first seven days.

This decrease in revenue and downloads during the game's first week compared to its predecessors isn't entirely unexpected. Candy Crush Friends Saga is, at this point, competing for users with three other games in the series, two of which (the original and Soda Saga) are still top 25 grossing worldwide as of last month. Time will tell if it's able to carve out its own equally engaged audience of new and crossover players, but King clearly made the choice to move ahead with a global release because it liked what it saw in soft launch. How that translates to the greater mobile gaming world will no doubt be of great interest to developers looking to serialize their own titles in the genre, as Playrix, Peak Games, and other have also managed to do with considerable success.