CityVille Hits 48M Players, Likely To Pass FarmVille Soon

Zynga may have a new flagship title sometime in the next three days, according to Inside Social Games. CityVille has surged to 48 million monthly active users in its first 18 days of operation and is still acquiring new users. Zynga’s current flagship title, FarmVille, serves around 56 million monthly active users and has held steady around that figure for months. As of this writing, CityVille is the fastest-growing social game ever, gaining new users at a rate of over 2.5 million per day.

Only FarmVille has ever been as large as CityVille is now. FarmVille’s growth finally stopped at around 80 million users before it began a slow year-long decline down to its current number of monthly active users. It seems entirely possible that CityVille could now meet or exceed FarmVille’s peak MAU before decline sets in. CityVille’s growth has boosted Zynga’s total MAU to around 241 million and its DAU to around 55 million. The gains aren’t all positive, though.

At least some of CityVille’s users seem to be cannibalized from the heaviest users of Zynga’s previous most popular games, FarmVille and FrontierVille. Both games have seen declines in their numbers of daily active users since CityVille’s launch. CityVille’s DAU as percentage of MAU has also dropped since since last week, from about 66% to about 30%. This is a healthy figure but indicates that CityVille’s irrational exuberance is already beginning to taper off.

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