Social game company King continues to reap big profits in the face of flagging revenues and an expanding game catalog that still revolves around its flagship title: Candy Crush Saga.
The first quarter of King's 2015 fiscal year [PDF] closed on March 31st, and saw the company reporting a quarterly profit of $196.7 million on revenue of $569.8 million. That's almost $10 million more take-home profit than it saw in the same period last year, even as revenue has declined year-over-year.
That $569.8 million figure is a bit better than the $563 million some market analysts had predicted, but still a 6 percent drop in revenue from the $607.6 million King saw in the same period last year. King's gross bookings (total in-game sales) also slipped roughly 5 percent year-over-year, down to $604.5 million.
The company is also proudly touting the fact that Candy Crush Saga no longer accounts for the vast majority of its bookings. When King went public early last year the game made up 78 percent of its total bookings, and this quarter Candy Crush Saga accounts for roughly 38 percent.
However, that could change soon as the company confirmed a partnership with Microsoft today to bring its games to Windows 10, starting with pre-installed copies of Candy Crush Saga.
The company is also reporting a rise in monthly unique users across all its games and says its now earning over $5 more a month on average from every paying user, even as its number of monthly unique payers has dipped by almost 30 percent year-over-year.