>> Hi guys. Good morning.
Welcome to this presentation.
Just look out here in the audience,
I don't see any Kingsters here
but do we have anyone from Microsoft?
We have a few people from Microsoft here.
It's good. Any other companies around here?
I guess we're mainly Microsoft today.
I guess most of you guys are also from the U.S. we don't
have too many jetlag people. Also good.
I mean it's pretty good to be European
because then at least in the morning you're okay, right?
So, let's kick this off and talk
about King and Microsoft.
The topic of this presentation is Why Candy Crush on
Windows 10? I guess you all played it.
Anyone here that didn't play Candy Crush?
Oh, you didn't. You got a lot to learn my friend.
It's a thing you need to do today.
Learn how to play Candy Crush.
Well, the answer to that question for us is quite simple.
We believe in the Windows 10 platform and we believe in
Microsoft store for casual gaming.
When you think about it,
casual gaming or gaming and
Microsoft goes pretty much hand in hand.
Xbox is big, it's gaming, it's Microsoft.
So, we also believe
that with all the devices out there on Windows 10,
Windows 10 and Microsoft still has
a huge potential for
becoming a major casual gaming platform.
So, my name is Alex,
I work for King,
I'm Swedish so, that's my accent,
a little bit of Swedish.
So, if you don't understand me fully,
you can just shout out, right.
I've been at King for five years.
I started in 2013 when Candy Crush pretty
much hit every app store
in the world and a made huge success.
So, I'm not a very techie guy,
so I prefer if
you don't do any of
the really hard techie questions today.
I'm more of a casual gamer.
I'm not a hardcore gamer,
so this fits me perfectly.
Actually I prefer probably to play things like Sudoku.
Not a very social game, pretty nerdy,
so that's where I'm kind of gaming sphere right.
And I've been heading up the
Microsoft partnership since 2014.
So, now I have two slides here about King.
Those are the generic ones that I had to bring with me.
So, at King we make great games.
That's what we believe in. Its games
that people will play all over the world.
2013 when we hit the market,
we saw that everyone suddenly turned from accessing
online features on computers
to access it on mobile devices instead.
And that's when we really hit the market
and it became such a big success.
So, when it comes to King,
we've been around for about 15 years now.
I think we launched numerous of hundreds of titles.
Some of our biggest franchises you've
probably all heard about like the Candy Crush,
Bubble Witch, and Farm Hero, for example.
I think this slide is slightly old.
I think we're more than 2000 people now.
We continue to grow, we continue to recruit heavily.
And we also recently started
this studio here in San Francisco.
So, it's quite a happening company
to work for and it's good fun.
So, when it comes to Microsoft.
What's interesting about Microsoft?
Well, I'd say is one of the top
10 top tech companies in the world.
And if you think about, it's
such a huge entity in
the whole world of tech and what gaming is really.
I've heard the numbers 600 million monthly
active devices running on Windows 10 now.
From our perspective as well,
it's extremely interesting to see that all the other
kind of devices that are out
there that are also running on Windows.
So, we believe this really has
the potential to grow really big.
And then the fact that everyone is
in one or another way affected by Microsoft.
We touched yesterday about you're having dishwashers,
and refrigerators, security systems,
all of that is, also many of them running on Windows.
So, we're all affected about it and most people
probably has one or another opinion on it.
And the fact that it's primarily
professional usage, right?
That's interesting. So, what
does King mean for Microsoft?
What do we believe that King means for Microsoft?
Well, one thing is
that Candy Crush is a well-known brand.
It's a massive brand. I normally say that it's probably
the largest candy company in
the world and it's extremely sweet.
And for us it's casual gaming for the masses.
When we hit the market to that extent in 2013,
we saw that everyone was playing Candy Crush and
people even started connecting
with each other in the streets.
We heard about people on
the subway in Hong Kong asking each others
for lives to continue play while they
were in transit to work et cetera.
Then we've been able to largely monetize our user base.
And we believe that we one of the companies
where our apps have been part of
making people start using
the stores and actually paying in stores,
converting to be payers.
And that reflects all stores and I think
we've had a very good partnership with
Microsoft in growing
the monetization player base for Microsoft.
So, what we believe that we're doing is basically we're
partnering with Microsoft to
grow the ecosystem of Windows 10.
And this is the fun part because we
actually see that this is happening.
And then something we
think that we're doing and think we should
do is to gamify the desktop and all the other devices.
We think that everyone should have
a possibility to play games
even when maybe they should be working, right?
So, I don't know if
anyone knows where this quote is from.
Yes, I see some people have seen it.
It's from The Shining with Jack Nicholson.
And it actually makes sense.
We think that if you could add
that to your daily life to,
yeah, maybe I could play a little bit of game.
It's probably good for motivation.
Perhaps you should have some kind of feature
in for example when you
play Candy Crush or any other game that,
you see your boss coming down the hallway that you could
just push a button and
you will just jump into Excel or something.
That's one of the features that we would like you to see.
So, casual gaming on Windows,
when you think about it, it's
probably always been there with us, right?
Is there anyone here who know to play this one.
Did you play? You played it, right? Yeah, good.
This is actually a screenshot the other day,
so you start playing and you get hooked into these games.
It's still a very good game.
And I made about 50 percent
of the bombs or the mine so far.
I think I was doing pretty well.
Then of course this one and I understand
that Microsoft Solitaire's still a very big game.
A lot of people playing around the world.
And this is the frustration
slightly after the other slide,
the other picture that I showed you.
When you realized that 50 percent
then I did pretty well but then you get up to 60 percent,
that's where I just can't handle it anymore.
You start clicking away and you fail.
It happens.
So, if we turn that question around and
ask what does Microsoft mean for King?
Well, one thing is extended reach,
and if you look at the player base
or the user base that you have,
we're talking about 600 monthly active users, right?
But then, also knowing that there are
so many devices out there that are running on Windows,
that could potentially be Windows 10,
that makes it very interesting.
Then, when you think about it as well,
this is not only a desktop.
And if you launch on Universal Windows platform,
you actually reach all the devices
that run on Windows 10.
And one of the things that we've been
thinking about is the context,
what is a mobile device.
I have one of these Surfaces that I normally
carry around with me and I
bring it to the office every day,
and I connect it to the screen,
a large screen, and to a keyboard and a mouse.
And sometimes, I wonder,
why do I need such a big device for that.
So, one of the things that we're
thinking is perhaps in the future,
this will be just smaller devices
that you can actually also call from,
add a function for calling your friends.
That makes it another kind of mobile device.
So, for us working with Windows
is the opportunity of the reach,
but also preparing ourselves for the future,
because we believe Microsoft is a big company,
it's been around for a very long time,
and always comes back with very exciting products.
So, that's very interesting for us to follow.
And then, the quality of the platform,
our games are running extremely well on the platform.
People play, they're happy and they continue to play.
It's a very solid platform.
So, if we go back a little bit
to when we started working with Microsoft,
and we launched the first version of Candy Crush,
we did it through a so-called Tool.
And for me, nothing techy,
that was pretty much it took an iOS app,
you put it into the Tool,
that from my view looked more like a washing machine,
and then it came out to be a very good Windows app.
It worked really, really well.
And then, of course,
we saw the opportunity
and continued to work with this and we did
a native version with
less dependency and also better, cleaner, version.
But, it made complete sense for us.
And then, in 2015, we launched on Windows 10.
So, let's see.
We know that someone didn't play this game.
Anyone who didn't play this game,
then you know about it.
This is the Candy Crush Soda.
I think most people played it.
Jelly, you guys know it,
this is the third sequel of Candy Crush.
And these are the games that
we've launched on the platform.
Papa Pear Saga is a shooter.
And then, we have resource
management game called Paradise Bay,
and Bubble Witch is another shooter
from one of our big franchises,
and then a Card Game.
Card Game is interesting, because card
is a natural game being on Windows. You've always had it.
Basically, it's casher games,
but we have four sub-genres live on Windows 10.
We have Matched Three,
we have Bubble Shooters,
we have Resource Management and we have Card Game.
And that's the big question.
We're committed to continue.
So, you will see new games coming up on the platform.
So, something that we think is interesting is,
how the platform has been performing,
but most importantly what's
going to happen in the future.
And if it's 600 million active users today,
that's not too far,
I think we've been two-and-a-half year,
the platform been up there.
So, with all of the devices around the world,
it's probably going to reach a billion fairly soon.
And we expect the platform to grow.
But, we also expect King and
our games to grow with the platform.
But what we also believe is that,
if we make efforts and work hard together with
you guys in Microsoft
to do the best possible that we can,
we have a possibility
to improve our outcome on the platform.
And we also believe that,
with our success and what we have done,
we can also help the ecosystem to grow for Microsoft.
So, we believe that
we really have a good synergy in this,
and we believe that gaming
companies and gamifying desktop and Windows 10,
will help the whole ecosystem to really,
potentially grow to something extremely big.
And I think this is the main thing
that I want to tell you guys today that,
we can work together to really grow this ecosystem.
So, coming back to the first slides,
we believe in this,
we believe in working with Windows 10.
We think it's a huge opportunity for our games to grow,
and to help Microsoft
to grow the ecosystem of Windows 10.
600 million active users today,
it's a big number. It's really a big number.
And then as I mentioned, it's
about preparing for the future,
because you never know
how many more devices that will be added,
will there be a mobile version,
will there be smaller versions of
Surfaces is actually the same as the mobile version,
and what is the mobile device of the future.
So, that's pretty much
what I wanted to share with you today.
So, I said thank you.
And if we have any questions, I'm willing to take that.
>> [inaudible]
>> Yeah, it's a two.
I don't know if it's still around actually.
It was in 2014.
My coders told me that
if you really want to sound like a techie guy,
tell them that it was called OpenGL,
and the way we did it was called Angle.
But is anyone tech in here from Microsoft,
would be able to pick up on that question?
But it's a very simple tool.
But, I said today, we're Windows 10 is
actually quite easy to just get the apps to native,
so I'd probably do that instead.
>> There was a converter that we used for
sometime to help boost iOS apps into Windows apps.
I don't think [inaudible]
>> Okay. Thank you guys. Good to be here with you.