We’ve been covering the spectacular rise of Criminal Case since its launch just one year ago. Having integrated fun and accessible game play, high quality game design and integrated and deep storylines, they’ve managed to take the genre of hidden object games to a whole new level. To date, an impressive 100 million players have played Criminal Case and, as of this month, it still logs 6M active daily users.
Building Criminal Case has actually been a pretty substantial undertaking by the Pretty Simple Games team. Given its evolving storyline design, one new investigation is produced each week, with each representing several hours of entertainment for players. This has obviously caused Pretty Simple to rapidly expand its team since the Criminal Case launch, with 20 new people joining and plans to add another 100 over the next two years. Thanks to a solid stream of revenues, which according to the team is in the ‘8-digits’, they’re able to properly fund this expansion as well as, of course, work on the next big game hit(s).
While still a huge hit for them, like most games Criminal Case has receded from its peak #2 position on Facebook. There is, however, still ample opportunity for Criminal Case to grow as it hasn’t yet been extended to mobile. Following the lead of other gaming companies that have struck gold on mobile, including Supercell and King.com, they’re anticipating that the launch of Criminal Case on iOS in early 2014 and Android later in the year will have a similar effect for them. Shifting their focus to mobile should not only help them to grow in their existing markets, but also help them gain ground in markets where mobile gaming is king.