Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social hits 4.6 million daily players a week after launch

Electronic Arts’ latest Facebook game, The Sims Social, has picked up more than 4.6 million daily active users after launching a week ago, according to AppData.

The Sims Social was the fastest growing social game this week, picking up 2.6 million daily active users as of the beginning of the week and 1.2 million daily active users today alone. That’s compared to Zynga’s smash hit Empires & Allies, which lost around 328,000 daily active users today. Frontierville, another Zynga game that recently released a new sub-game called Pioneer Ville, lost around 220,000 daily active users today, according to AppData.

Electronic Arts’ newest social game looks like it will give Zynga — which hasn’t really faced any stiff competition in Facebook games —?a run for its money. That’s because the game has a massive franchise and name behind it, along with a development team that has a pretty stellar track record. EA has sold more than 140 million copies of the The Sims and its sequels and expansion packs and has generated around $3 billion in revenue from it.

The Sims Social is basically a lightweight version of The Sims built into a browser on Facebook. The team behind The Sims and casual games maker Playfish both worked on the game. Electronic Arts bought Playfish in 2009 when it was vying with social games maker Zynga for the top social gaming spot.?Zynga has since lurched ahead and claimed the top spot, with 264 million monthly active.

Before The Sims Social launched, Electronic Arts had around 29 million monthly active users,?according to AppData. The company has since risen to around 34.6 million monthly active users, passing social gaming company Wooga (which has around 34 million monthly active users).

The Sims was a smash hit with casual gamers because it was a very light game that was easy to get into and offered a lot of depth. You basically control a “sim” as it lives its life and try to achieve lifetime goals — which lets gamers accomplish whatever they want to do in the game. ?The games are known for having tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp writing.

Electronic Arts has not-so-quietly established a fierce casual and social gaming team. The company bought Playfish back in 2009 and also bought casual games maker PopCap?for $750 million. Both teams have made successful games, and once the PopCap deal closes,?there’s a good chance Playfish will be working with casual games maker PopCap.

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Tags: CityVille, Farmville, social games, The Sims, The Sims Social

Companies: Electronic Arts

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Are daily deals a bubble or just the new kid at school?

It’s no surprise that there’s been bubble talk in the daily deal industry.

Like the cool new kid at school (Mean Girls, anyone?), the e-commerce evolution of the coupon (i.e. the Groupons and LivingSocials of today) has sparked a ton of venture funding interest and generated a lot of industry speculation. As daily deals companies build scale and expand reach, they are finding support from the investor community in droves. Some say this financial interest will dissipate when consumers start getting bored, the novelty wears off, the services reach a saturation point and profits suddenly dry up. Daily Deal Media sees no signs of the market slowing down as an increasing number of sites test the market, helped by low barriers to entry.

But don’t call it a bubble yet.

Despite the startup action in this industry, of the 270 daily deal companies tracked, only 34 companies have received funding from the investor community. This underscores the growing investor caution in identifying daily deal companies that offer real potential for market adoption, growth and returns. The low barrier to entry and heavy competition are two major concerns cited by investors.

The 10 largest investments of the past six months include:

Globally, there are more than 3,000 daily deal companies, including roughly 1,000 in China, 900 in Europe and 600 in South America.

Investment amounts have ranged from the low seven-figure range to multi-million dollar deals, with Groupon’s $950 million round in January being the largest single-round funding to date. The top five companies in the space — which include Living Social, Gilt Groupe, Angie’s List and Ideelli — together have garnered over $2.1 billion and approximately 90 percent of the investments in the industry. Within this set, Groupon and LivingSocial have together garnered more than 72 percent of the funding.

The results we have seen in this index illustrate the explosion of this market, with the number of daily deal companies growing five-fold in the past year. Despite a conservative approach from many investors, daily deals companies are finding support from the investor community as they build scale and expand reach, and we expect this to continue for the foreseeable future.

Results of Daily Deal Media’s report on the space will be discussed at the 2011 Daily Deal Media Conference, the premier industry event for companies and investors in the Daily Deal market. The conference will be held September 8-9 in Chicago. VentureBeat readers click here and use discount code “vb2011” for a 15% discount.

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