CityVille Edges Past 100 Million MAU -- Over Half Are International Users

Zynga's CityVille has broken another record, moving past 100 million monthly active users in Facebook's latest stats update. The game now stands at 100,064,578 MAU, with 18,591,715 daily active users. The day before Christmas, CityVille passed FarmVille as Facebook's biggest game ever, so today's number just adds a little bonus shine to Zynga's new game. It has been 41 days since the game launched. Despite the big numbers, CityVille is arguably a less successful title than FarmVille. Its stickiness, of the DAU as a percentage of MAU is much lower; at FarmVille's high point it had well over 30 percent stickiness, while CityVille just dropped to 19 percent. Most developers consider DAU far more important, especially as a determiner of revenue. CityVille also has access to a much larger and more engaged international audience than FarmVille did, due to built-in localization for the major European languages that FarmVille still lacks. The result is that more than 50 percent of CityVille's playerbase is located outside Zynga's home country, according to demographic data from AppData. There are more differences from FarmVille. The average player age in CityVille skews much lower, perhaps a result of the preponderance of international users. And CityVille's users are far more evenly divided between men and women than almost any other Zynga hit (excluding Poker and Mafia Wars). Where will CityVille go from here? Its current growth rate suggests that it could be nearing its peak. Zynga has steadily ratched up advertising across every channel on Facebook, from performance ads to Tapjoy's cross-promo bar, and still the game's MAU growth has slowed dramatically from its previous average of three million MAU per day to a weekly average of a million MAU per day. Its growth over the past day was about half a million MAU. We previously suggested that 125 million MAU would be an upper limit for CityVille, but given the slowdown, it might not top 110 million. Not that Zynga should mind; whatever the wrinkles in traffic, revenue or player lifetime may be, it undoubtedly has a smash hit on its hands, and one that will likely find new success on smartphones soon. Demographic data cited above from AppData Pro.

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CityVille Edges Past 100 Million MAU -- Over Half Are International Users

Chris Morrison

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