Has CityVille reached its peak? Falling numbers say yes

At around January 13, CityVille reached a whopping 100 million players on Facebook (it peaked at around 101 million). That's nearly half of all players, playing all Facebook games, regardless of genre or developer. At the time, the game seemed unstoppable - smashing FarmVille's record of 84 million players set in early 2010 seemed impossible, and yet CityVille had done it. However, according to the latest AppData figures, not all is as happy as it seems in the land of CityVille.

The latest figures on AppData proper have CityVille once again back under the 100 million player mark - 99 million to be exact. Sure, that's still a huge number (even if it does account for a loss of almost 2 million players), but it does show that one of the most basic principles of Facebook gaming has still held true here - longevity in games is the key; not just how many players you can pull in to try out a game in its first month on the site.

CityVille has had a huge run to the top, as players of all ages wanted to try this incredibly hyped and publicized offering from the biggest developer on the site. Even a single play session of five or ten minutes will add that user to the monthly active users total for a game, which helps explain why CityVille reached as high of a number as it did, and why the number is starting to fall.

The past 24 hours has seen CityVille lose over 550,000 mayors - almost a million have left in the last week. Just how quickly will the game's numbers plummet now that one or even two-time users have given up on the game because it just wasn't for them? Only time will tell, but we'll make sure to keep a close eye on both the falling or rising numbers of CityVille in the future.

In the meantime, let us know your thoughts on CityVille as a whole. Are these high user numbers simply too high to last, or is this small drop-off in players only temporary? Share your predictions about CityVille's future with us in the comments.