That may be true, but I was just trying to point out to the concern that every big name developer will now suddenly jump ship to start developing an endless barrage of mobile games and stop development for console games. While there may be some crazy success story like CCS once in a while, the majority of mobile games don't have such success.

For the most part, to gain something, one does need to take some level of risk. Making a console game can be rather risky, but the payoff can be in the form of long time dedicated fans that you don't get elsewhere.

Only thing I really hate about the game is that sometimes a level is due to faulty arrangement of candys simply impossible to advance.
Meaning there's more luck involved than it should.

Seriously though I have to admit this is god damn pathetic that people are this addicted to candy crush saga, so much they actually spend money on it.

it's like a drug to them they spend a bit of money for a few moments of satisfaction but it doesn't last so they spend more and more and more to keep satisfied it's disgusting that this is a legitimite business plan

The cost of google advertising and pop up banners and such is a lot more than you think.  THese F2P games are advertised everywhere.  They know that it will take a huge amount of people to follow the link before they get their hooks into a player and bleed them dry.

I think the difference is that the big name publishers have money to spend on marketing. I imagine the guys who made CCS started with zero marketing and they slowly start gaining popularity thanks to word of mouth.  I remember Rayman something Fiesta was on the top sellers for a while, that was most likely thanks to marketing made by Ubisoft. 

I do agree with your second point, that's why I don't like this approach to mobile games.

Wow that's impressive! I don't get the appeal of candy crush but I guess simple and addicting games can make huge amounts of money.

Is there any regular publisher where a single game brings in 78% of revenue for a period? REVENUE, not profit. Losing money on a game still brings in revenue.

The other games also seem quite tied to the success and publicity of the first. If the popularity of the genre/format goes down, won't they all collapse at once?

To people saying this is low risk: they clearly have ONE BILLION DOLLARS in expenses for last year. Looks like a huge risk if CCS fails, they'll still have that same salary bill to pay.

none.. but WoW is probably at 30% and CoD the other 70% (does activision even release other games?)
But the expensives are probably a few accountant tricks to get the profit and tax down.. thats not uncommon..
and if CCS drops like a stone suddenly within a few months they still would have billions to develop a next game.. sure it's a bubble that can deflate slowly any time but its not a Zynga.. Zynga had the trouble of converting their succesfull games to Mobile.. Farmville was in a time when Tablets / Smartphones didn't capture the casual market... a problem which King.com doesn't have..

I actually agree with you, I have theory and well developed one at that (Given I never wrote it down, might actually write an essay for fun on it, to see if I am right in a couple of years). With Irrational shuting down it makes that theory gain some leverage. The shrinkage AAA gaming begins. (The other side of that theory is the rise of indy budget games, or indy like games. 

AAA is not going to be completely dead mind you. GTA VI will be an example of that.

Edit: Given I shouldn't make educated post at works, I get distracted way too easily.

But $1.3bn for advertising?! Isn't that too high? What medium of advertising do they use? I only see app adverts when I'm viewing websites on my phone and internet advertising isn't so expensive.