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
DeanBeat: Game companies raised a record-breaking $1.54B in 2011
Game fundings destroyed the record book for fundings this year as 145 companies raised more than $1.540 billion in 2011, not counting initial public offerings.
In 2011, games took center stage. Game investment changed fundamentally during the year, as investors shifted their money into social, mobile and online games as they chased after users who were embracing the newest platforms for games.
The total game investment number is up more than 47 percent from the … Continue Reading
CashVille: Zynga prices at a high $10 a share
After months of delay, social game maker Zynga is finally about to go public. The company priced its stock moments ago at $10 a share, the upper-end of the price range.
The maker of games like FarmVille and CityVille now has enough cash to buy many of the hardcore game companies that openly scoffed as Zynga came of age.
Founder Mark Pincus is now a multibillionaire on paper, as the majority shareholder in a company … Continue Reading
Wall Street analysts calculate whether Zynga is worth $8.9B
Zynga is about to begin trading as a public company on Thursday, but the value of the company is up for debate, based on reports from some well-known Wall Street analysts and other financial experts.
The San Francisco-based social gaming company is planning to raise about $850 million to $1.15 billion at a price of $8.50 to $10 a share, giving the company an expected valuation of $7.6 billion to $8.9 billion. Zynga, whose history … Continue Reading
Timeline: A chronology of the life of Zynga
Zynga is expected to go public any day now. The social game maker could raise more than $1 billion at a valuation of $8.9 billion as it seeks to spread its social games to all platforms where gamers congregate.
Founded by Mark Pincus (pictured right) in 2007, Zynga has has packed an interesting and colorful history into its four and a half years. Here’s our chronology of the life of Zynga.
Dec. 12, 2011 — … Continue Reading
From castles to card games: a rundown of Zynga’s biggest titles
Zynga is the most recognizable name in social gaming. Facebook members and iPhone owners alike have seen Zynga’s games continuously rise and fall from the top of the charts over the past few years, and with CastleVille’s launch earlier this month, it is unlikely that will change any time soon. The company is likely to go public soon and raise a ton of money, so we thought we would show this primer on Zynga’s social … Continue Reading
How Zynga grew from gaming outcast to $9 billion social game powerhouse
Update: This article is now available as a 63-page e-book on Amazon’s Kindle bookstore.
Zynga has turned the video game world upside down in its short five-year history. As it’s poised on the verge of a massive initial public offering, the social game startup is now one of gaming’s great success stories.
But its success was never a foregone conclusion. In fact, most game industry veterans didn’t view it as a real game company. Mark … Continue Reading
CEO claims Zynga could double paid users after IPO, and he’s probably right
Zynga co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Pincus said today that his company could double its number of paid subscribers.
Zynga has about 215 million monthly users. Roughly 7.7 million of these users have purchased Facebook Credits, which can be redeemed for virtual goods inside Zynga games like Farmville. This figure represents between 2.5 and 3 percent of Zynga’s total user base.
“We could see that doubling,” Pincus said before a room of about 100 … Continue Reading
How Zynga’s IPO went from a $20B valuation to $8.9B in five months
When credible reports about Zynga’s upcoming IPO filing started flying this July, expectations for the social gaming giant’s value were running $15 billion to $20 billion. Now, with Zynga detailing the offering ahead of trading set to start December 15th, the actual offering price could value the company from $5.9 billion to $6.99 billion, or $7.6 billion to $8.9 billion including employee stock options.
With options included, Zynga’s value will be $7.6 billion to $8.9 … Continue Reading
Rovio cracks nut market with new pistachio-branded Angry Birds game
The newest version of mega-popular game franchise Angry Birds isn’t a downloadable mobile app, but rather a web-based promotion built around California nut producer Wonderful Pistachios.
The free-to-play, five level promotional game — playable on a subsection of AngryBirds.com – features the now-ubiquitous, titular birds launching at both pigs and nuts hiding in half-separated pistachio shells. The game also has branded backgrounds including a pistachio orchard and a football game with nuts as snacks. A … Continue Reading
The zCloud revisited: lessons from Zynga’s public-private cloud experience
Recently, we were proud to publicly unveil the private cloud computing infrastructure that we use to scale our social games — infrastructure that we internally (and affectionately) call zCloud. zCloud leverages both our internal infrastructure components and our public cloud partner, Amazon Web Services. This hybrid cloud, using private and public clouds in unison, allows us to scale our social games efficiently and effectively for our millions of daily players.
The first rollout of zCloud … Continue Reading
Zynga IPO set for Dec. 15 at $10B valuation?
Social game maker Zynga is reportedly planning to go public on Dec. 15 at a valuation of $10 billion, according to a report by Reuters.
The valuation is much lower than the $15 billion to $20 billion that was rumored as Zynga’s expected valuation when it filed papers to go public on July 1. Reuters cited two unnamed sources close to the process.
The IPO will generate about $900 million in proceeds at a price … Continue Reading
Owen Van Natta steps down from executive role at Zynga
Owen Van Natta, the chief business officer at social game maker Zynga, is stepping down from that post and moving to a new role as a strategic advisor focused on major partnerships.
He will remain on the board but will give up millions of pre-IPO shares by moving out of his operations role, according to AllThingsD and a regulatory filing by the company, which is being closely watched since it is the largest social-game publisher … Continue Reading
Zynga launches CastleVille social game and new FarmVille plush toys
Social game maker Zynga formally launched CastleVille as part of its accelerated release schedule for games in advance of its planned initial public offering.
Zynga has high hopes for this addition to its Ville series of games — YoVille, PetVille, FishVille, FarmVille, CityVille — and its launch shows that the San Francisco-based company is staying on its schedule of launching something new every few weeks, rather than last year’s pace of launching something every few … Continue Reading
Zynga will debut on NASDAQ as “ZNGA”
Social gaming giant Zynga has decided to list its shares on the tech-heavy NASDAQ stock exchange, according to a recent filing with the securities and exchange commission.
The NYSE has dueled with the NASDAQ stock market to attract high-profile tech IPOs, but it’s traditionally been a losing battle as the NASDAQ stock market regularly plays host to the largest tech companies in the world like Google and Apple. Zynga is easily the largest IPO planned … Continue Reading
Zynga’s Shrek-inspired CastleVille is ‘building on the shoulders of giants’ (Q&A)
Amid a host other game announcements, Zynga unveiled its newest “Ville” game, CastleVille, at the Zynga Unleashed event this week. CastleVille certainly seems more ambitious than other games — it has better graphics than Zynga’s other titles and the soundtrack features a 75-person orchestra.
I got a chance to chat with Bill Jackson, creative director of CastleVille, to find out just how much work went into the game.
VB: Can you give me a sense … Continue Reading
Ugh: Zynga’s Farmville in talks for movie treatment
As annoying as it is to get Farmville requests from friends on Facebook, now there may be no way to escape the popular game: Farmville in talks to be made into a movie.
Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen, writers on the classic film Toy Story and decidedly not classic movies Garfield and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, revealed late last week they have been in talks with Farmville-creator Zynga to write an adaptation.… Continue Reading
EA’s The Sims Social breezes past Zynga’s Farmville
Game publishing company Electronic Arts‘ newest social game, The Sims Social, has passed social gaming supergiant Zynga’s Farmville and now has 36 million monthly active users just under a month after its launch, according to AppData.
The Sims Social has held the top spot as the fastest growing application on Facebook for more than a week. The game picked up more than 1.7 million new users on Sunday, and picked up a total of about … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social is now live
The Sims Social, a social gaming version of Electronic Arts’ incredibly popular life simulation franchise The Sims, is now live on Facebook.
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 … Continue Reading
