As social games boom, Spark Capital hires former Zynga exec as first venture partner
Zynga’s rise to a social gaming juggernaut traded on the public markets—which now boasts a market cap roughly equal to long-established companies like Electronic Arts—highlights the rapid transformation of the gaming industry.
Boston’s Spark Capital, eager to tap the next wave of startups in that space, has added Nabeel Hyatt, a general manager who helped founded Zynga Boston, as their first venture partner.
Hyatt has a long history as a tech entrepreneur. He trained as … Continue Reading
Hasbro licenses game characters and brands from Zynga
Hasbro and Zynga are announcing a deal where the big toy company will create toys based on Zynga’s game characters and social gaming brands. It’s a marriage of the old new game worlds that makes sense as the physical and digital worlds converge.
The deal helps keep Hasbro more relevant for a generation of kids who are growing up with online social games. While Facebook is still technically not for kids, a lot of social-game … Continue Reading
Nexon invades Zynga’s turf with plan to launch Kart Rider on Facebook
Nexon and Zynga are dueling to be the darlings of the new game industry. Nexon got big with free-to-play online games that you download over the web to a computer. Zynga dominates the casual game market on Facebook. Now Nexon is moving in on Facebook with the planned launch of its KartRider Dash game for the social network.
Tokyo-based Nexon, which went public in December, is launching the game as a free-to-play title — where … Continue Reading
GamesBeat weekly news roundup
Here’s some of the stories that ran only on GamesBeat this week. We’re running more stories exclusively on the GamesBeat section of VentureBeat now, particularly when the stories are mainly of interest to game readers. The broader interest stories are running on VentureBeat as well. And please visit the GamesBeat section to catch up on game news. We’re ramping up our game coverage, so you’ll find more and more news at GamesBeat.
Here’s some of … Continue Reading
The DeanBeat: Billionaire Mark Pincus breaks out of quiet period (exclusive interview)
Mark Pincus is the newest billionaire in Silicon Valley, thanks to the December initial public offering of Zynga, the social game giant he founded in 2007.
For much of last year, Zynga was in a quiet period leading up to its IPO and Pincus had to wear a muzzle. During that time, Zynga haters came out of the woodwork in poorly disguised attempts to derail the IPO.
But the company managed to go public at … Continue Reading
Elite game group recruits board members from the new guard at Nexon and Zynga
The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences is an elite professional game group that puts on the annual Dice Summit gaming event in Las Vegas and selects the winners for the equivalent of the game industry’s Oscars. So it’s interesting that the academy is adding two new board members from Nexon and Zynga.
Min Kim (pictured below), vice president of Live Games at Nexon, and Brian Reynolds (pictured right), chief game designer at Zynga, have … Continue Reading
Beware the king: Zuckerberg’s voting power a risk to shareholders
As VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell pointed out yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg managed to strike a deal with some key investors and friends that gives him 57 percent of the shareholder voting power. For a public company, it’s an almost unheard of concentration of authority, a troubling sign for those who focus on shareholder rights.
“The public has no say in the control of the board, which in my view is terribly harmful to any notion … Continue Reading
Zynga accounted for $445M, or 12 percent of Facebook’s revenue, in 2011
Zynga, the largest app publisher on Facebook, accounted for 12 percent of the social network’s total revenue in 2011, according to Facebook’s inital public offering filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That means that Zynga accounted for $445 million of Facebook’s revenue in 2011.
The numbers show that Facebook and Zynga have intertwined fates, with both depending on the other for revenues. Zynga, however, is more dependent, as about 90-percent-plus of its revenues are … Continue Reading
Dylan’s Desk: 6 things you should know about the Facebook IPO
If Facebook files its paperwork for an initial public offering this week, as many expect it to do, we’ll be on the road to one of the biggest tech IPOs in recent history.
The offering will probably raise $10 billion in cash for the company and will value Facebook at somewhere between $75 and $100 billion, making founder Mark Zuckerberg, who holds an estimated 24 percent of the company, a billionaire many times over. That … Continue Reading
Zynga CEO: We aren’t the copycats on Bingo social game (exclusive interview)
Mark Pincus, chief executive of social gaming giant Zynga, denied that Zynga copied a rival’s Bingo game on Facebook. Instead, he said in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat that the accuser in this case borrowed from Zynga.
On Sunday, Buffalo Studios in Santa Monica, Calif., alleged that the upcoming Zynga Bingo was a copy of Buffalo’s Bingo Blitz game, which has a million daily players on Facebook.
The story reinvigorated one of the oldest memes … Continue Reading
Zynga Bingo debuts on Facebook as part of casino suite
Adding to its Zynga Casino suite, Zynga is announcing today it has launched Zynga Bingo in a closed beta test on Facebook.
The game is the newest social game for Zynga, which is moving at a faster and faster pace to launch new games that help the company preserve its dominant position on the world’s biggest social network.
Initially, the game will be available as a closed beta test and it will be available to … Continue Reading
THQ launches a Margaritaville Online Facebook game
In a major attempt to diversify, traditional video game publisher THQ is launching its Margaritaville Online social game on Facebook today.
Inspired by the Jimmy Buffett song, the game is an escapist fantasy and a major release for Agoura Hills, Calif.-based THQ. The has been making traditional PC and console games for more than a decade, but it’s struggling to set itself apart by creating unique games in a market where it has huge rivals. … Continue Reading
Tiny Tower devs are happy to inspire Zynga’s new game, Dream Heights (image)
Zynga is synonomous with ripping off other developers’ games, but very rarely do they get called out for it.
In fact, Zynga has even tried to sue people for copying their games – ironically enough. The company’s latest game, Dream Heights, bears more than a striking resemblance to 2011′s iPhone Game of the Year (an honor awarded directly by Apple) Tiny Tower. And as you can see from the image below, at least one person … Continue Reading
What are the most-played words in Hanging With Friends? (exclusive)
Hanging With Friends is a multiplayer puzzle game by Zynga where you guess the secret word your opponent has entered. It’s like Hangman, without the lynching.
Zynga has been kind enough to share the top five most-played Hanging With Friends words with GamesBeat, just because we were curious (and thought you might be too). This is likely the only time you’ll see the words “sexy” and “zits” next to each other.
Hoax
Quad
Sexy
Zits
The DeanBeat: Should Zynga move into online gambling?
Do gambling and Facebook games go together?
Slot machine maker International Game Technology answered that question with a resounding “Yes!” when it bought Double Down Interactive, a 70-person Facebook casino game studio, for $500 million on Jan. 13. Zynga’s shares started going up after the deal was announced, which came shortly after the Obama administration’s Justice Department ruled in December that online gambling was legal, as long as it was not sports-related, which was specifically … Continue Reading
Zynga confirms it bought four mobile game companies
Zynga confirmed the names of four mobile game companies that it has acquired in recent months, according to Reuters.
The company did not disclose the sums paid for those companies, which make smartphone and tablet games. In an interview with Reuters, Zynga senior vice president David Ko said that it had acquired German company Gamedoctors in December. Gamedoctors, based in Bielefeld near Hanover, created mobile game ZombieSmash.
Zynga also purchased Page44 Studios, which is based … Continue Reading
Bionic Panda raises seed funding for Android mobile games
Bionic Panda Games has raised seed financing to develop mobile games for Google’s Android operating system, the company announced today. Not surprisingly, Google Ventures is one of the backers.
San Francisco-based Bionic Panda got its start in 2010 and has so far had one hit with Aqua Pets (pictured above), which has been downloaded more than 3 million times and is a top-100 grossing application on the Android Market.
That strong performance allowed it to … Continue Reading
Enterprise software player Splunk files for $125M IPO
Enterprise data software company Splunk has filed for a $125 million initial public offering, according to its SEC S-1 form.
San Francisco-based Splunk offers businesses software to better analyze and interpret their data. The company’s mission is to “make machine data accessible, usable and valuable to everyone.” The company claims that more than 3,300 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and various government agencies, use Splunk’s software. Companies such as Bank of America, Salesforce, … Continue Reading
DeanBeat: Game companies went on a $2.8B buying spree in 2011
The social and mobile games gold rush inspired lots of investments in 2011, as venture capitalists tried to find the next Zynga. But the year was also a big one for acquisitions, particularly as big companies such as Electronic Arts tried to outmaneuver the social game giant via acquisitions.
In 2011, 77 game companies were acquired for at least $2.827 billion, according to research by VentureBeat and other sources. We didn’t count the numbers for … Continue Reading
Zynga hires away EA’s top mobile and social executive Barry Cottle
Social gaming giant Zynga has hired Electronic Arts’ top mobile and social executive Barry Cottle as Zynga’s new executive vice president of corporate and business development.
The hire is a big development in the war for talent between the two companies, which are in the midst of a major battle for control of the fastest-growing parts of the game business. Cottle will report to John Schappert, chief operating officer at San Francisco-based Zynga and the … Continue Reading
