As a result, it’s not too surprising to see the developer get a new dance partner in order for the chance to have access to almost 500 million potential customers. CityVille was shut down on April 30, 2015. It was closed down on February, 2013 just three months after the game's release. 2 3 A sequel, CityVille 2, was released in December 2012. The game will be unveiled on the Pengyou platform and will eventually transition to QZone (China’s largest social network, which has 480 million users and is still growing).Ĭhina’s an incredibly tempting market for game companies, especially those like Zynga which specialize in casual games that make money by getting players to spend real-world cash on virtual goods. CityVille is a defunct casual social city-building game developed by Zynga, and released in December 2010. Unsurprisingly, this makes the group a pretty ideal partner for Zynga, and Tencent will launch CityVille under the new name of Zynga City. It’s got 647 million active accounts and its net worth ($38 billion) placed third behind Google and Amazon. As a result, Zynga’s joined forces with Tencent Holdings Limited, which “runs some of the most popular services in China including the Tencent QQ IM service, web portals, multiplayer online games, and social networks.” It turns out that Facebook is blocked in China, meaning that Zynga really didn’t have a choce if it wanted to get its games into the People’s Republic. In order to get into the country, the casual game company has had to divorce itself from the social network and seek new publishing partners in order to tap into the country’s vast population. Zynga’s games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars are pretty much synonymous with Facebook, but it turns out this won’t be the case in China. Sources: Wikipedia, AllThingsD.Hey, if it meant you could get access to half a billion customers, you’d ditch Facebook, too. You can read the full article on by clicking here. Zuckerberg et al will be watching as will rest of us as this high-stakes poker game plays itself out and the two giants continue to look for ways to "one-app" each other. The writer also makes references to a different platform for Google game network and also of "significant technical differences" whereas Google would host the games on their servers which in turn should make for a faster user experience than one finds via Zynga and Facebook.Īs for when this new games network will be launched the best the writer could offer was the non-commital "coming soon." "Google is close to launching a social game network that could make Facebook very, very nervous." Right from the outset the writer lays it out in plain English. Of course these same numbers don't sit too well in the halls at Google which is why, with its shiny new toy, Google+ or Google Plus (still not sure which one is correct), at the ready, Google is poised to announce the creation of its own games network, according to a recent article on which is part of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. It's fairly to safe to say that Facebook loves hearing those kinds of numbers and is also quite happy to have what some may call a "monopoly" on social gaming, seeing how there are 750,000,000 on Facebook worldwide, or whatever the latest number is. And according to Wikipedia, as of June 2011, social game developer Zynga's games on Facebook have over 270 million monthly active users with the most popular games being FarmVille and CityVille. And that opportunity was in social gaming. In another post I wrote, this one back in May I told of The Big Opportunity Marketers Are Missing Right Now. The world of social gaming has of course, exploded. Now comes word that Google is about to up the ante in a big way in their high-stakes poker game as each tries to "one-app" each other. It was in reference to Facebook's recent agreement with Skpe. A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled Facebook To Google: I'll See Your Google Plus And Raise You A Skype. Zyngas games, including CityVille and Words With Friends, first gained traction on popular social-networking site Facebook.
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