Disney Solitaire is Officially Out and Here's How It Stacks Up Against the Competition

Solitaire, the game children of the 90s probably remember for being built into Windows OS, is making a comeback. Well, kind of.

In the last few months, several big publishers released games that have the word "solitaire" in their name, even though the only similarity between them and the game we remember is that they are built around cards.

Wordscapes Solitaire came out last August, Candy Crush Solitaire came out in February, and the latest release, Disney Solitaire, came out just a few weeks ago.

Disney is a big name, but so is Candy Crush... Let's compare launches!

One of the sessions I was in at GDC was a postmortem of Wordscapes Solitaire. The team at PeopleFun did a lot to prove an idea and then to turn it into a comprehensive game. Wordscapes Solitaire's first week resulted in 117K downloads and $16K of player spending, according to Appfigures estimates.

The game started by monetizing with ads more than IAPs so the revenue is understandable. Still, just in terms of in-app purchases, the game managed to earn about $0.13/download.

The game went on to generate more than $700K/mo. of gross revenue, an average it's still holding, with a lifetime gross RpD of $1.59, which means PeopleFun not only focused on in-app purchases but has also been optimizing aggressively.

Then came Candy Crush in February with a much bigger launch. Our estimates show that Candy Crush Solitaire's first week on the App Store and Google Play resulted in 1.6M downloads and $120K of net revenue. That's the kind of launch I expect from one of the most popular brands on earth, though not revenue.

But while downloads were big, and with a reach like Candy Crush that's very expected, revenue per download was lower than Wordscapes' at just $0.07/download, according to our estimates. Just like Wordscapes, however, gross revenue rose after the launch hitting $1.3M in March and ended April with a lifetime gross RpD of $0.75.

That leads us to Disney Solitaire, which just launched. Between the weird political climate and a confused financial market, I expected player spending to be modest, but that wasn't at all what happened.

In its first week on the App Store and Google Play, Disney Solitaire made its way into 1.3M devices and earned $630K of gross revenue (before store fees), generating $0.48 per download from in-app purchases! The most of all three by far and the fastest growth. I expected downloads to be high, but revenue efficiency is a separate form of art, which SuperPlay, the publisher of Disney Solitaire, seems to be in command of.

Searching for Solitaire on the App Store doesn't return any of these games, a reminder that they're not really competing with the OGs. I looked through Apple Ads to see which of these games run campaigns and while all do, Disney's are the smallest and Wordscapes are the biggest (and by a lot). Considering Wordscapes Solitaire's conversion, this makes a lot of sense.

Games, just like apps, must hyper focus on turning every download into a paying user.