King’s latest Candy Crush game was downloaded 10 million times in its opening week

King’s Candy Crush Friends Saga has been downloaded 10 million times in its opening week.

Sensor Tower (via PocketGamer.biz) reports that despite Friends Saga hitting the top of the download charts across 36 countries in the App Store and 22 in the Google Play store, Friends Saga’s 10 million downloads is down 33 per cent on 2016’s Candy Crush sequel, Jelly Saga, first-week installs.

In comparison, Jelly Saga was downloaded 13 million times in its debut week, and the preceding game, Soda Saga, 14 million times.

In-app purchases (IAP) revenue is also down; Friends Saga has pulled in $780,000 whilst Jelly and Soda made $1.7 million and $3.7 million respectively in their opening weeks.

The fall is not entirely unforeseen, not least because the game had been "soft" launched prior to release. 

As Sensor Tower opines, it’s also possible that the expansion of King’s own Candy Crush range is competing with itself, particularly as both the original mobile title and Soda Saga remain within the Top 25 chart of the world’s highest grossing games.

Activision Blizzard acquired Candy Crush mobile company King.com for $5.9bn back in 2016, despite the firm’s financials which showed annual profits for 2015 fell by a tenth to $517 million.