The gaming world today is much different than it has ever been. Games are developed, become superhits, earn millions and fade away in a matter of months. A decade back something this would be at least an year long cycle. The other new addition is the millions of casual gamers who have become and important part of the industry because of iPhone’s cute little fun games and Zynga. Primarily Zynga. The old timers amongst you may have a hard time in believing this but Zynga’s second market valuation was more than EA, the gaming industry behemoth since forever. And this isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Zynga’s #1 game for long, FarmVille, has millions of active users on Facebook and other platforms! Finally a game called CityVille has overcome Farmville to become the World’s most played game. But that doesn’t make much of a difference because CityVille too was made by Zynga. CityVille has 61.7 million active users. This makes Zynga’s total active Facebook app user base to a whopping 261 million!
CityVille just like FarmVille is a browser based casual simulation game that can be played from within Facebook. You can think of it as SimCity’s online child, but much less detailed. The game is free to play but the virtual merchandise can be bought for real money from within the game. Zynga makes over $600 million every year from these purchases on Facebook and other platforms.
[via TNW]
