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Zynga, the company that brought you hit titles such as MafiaWars, Farmville, and Words With Friends, saw an 11.8% drop in their shares today, the lowest since the company’s IPO back in December of 2011. The drop made shares for the company hit the sub $5 mark, which is leading some to believe that casual gaming is making a move away from web-based gaming (ie: Facebook), and onto mobile devices where quite honestly, it really belongs.
Mobile gaming has been booming with the introduction of smartphones that are more powerful than many user’s desktops, and app markets flooded with casual games for all experience levels. Of course, this doesn’t look so good for Facebook who is seeing more gamers make the move to mobile, but at least you’ll get less notifications from your grandma looking to improve her virtual farm.
I can’t stand those games in my facebook feed. I block them every chance I get.
Word (sorry, grandma)
In the title… is the term, ‘gamer’, becoming a looser and looser term as time wears on?
It used to be reserved for just those of us ‘dorks’ that played on the computer and then the consoles. I hardly see facebook, or any other social outlet website, as a place for ‘gaming’.
You’d be surprised how many people think Mafia Wars is a great game
You mean it’s not? O_o
Those kids lied to me…
I get that the stigma of being part of FaceBook and its flopped IPO would bring down Zynga’s stock, but not because of gamers leaving FaceBook in favor of mobile. Not when I consider that Zynga already makes several very popular games for both Android and iOS — of which are generally in the top 10 each month.
Anyways, I’m not a fan of Zynga — let alone FaceBook — but I don’t get why anyone that’s invested in their stocks would be so myopic as to not see that this company is already successfully whoring mobile just as it has whored FaceBook.
Zynga down, ArmA 2 to the top of the charts on Steam (thanks to DayZ zombie madness). Good stuff.
I think there’s also the fact that Zynga games have gotten annoying to play. Every Turn there’s an ad for yet another Zynga game or pay for the one your playing to get rid of the ad about the game you’re playing….