Zynga revealed three new game partners to their recently announced game platform today at GDC, including Rebellion and Playdemic (creator of Gourmet Ranch). The big news is that the third game partner is Konami.
What is Konami releasing as a social game on Zynga? We don’t know. When? Ditto.
Zynga revealed three new game partners to their recently announced game platform today at GDC, including Rebellion and Playdemic (creator of Gourmet Ranch). The big news is that the third game partner is Konami.
What is Konami releasing as a social game on Zynga? We don’t know. When? Ditto.
But, Rob Dyer, Zynga’s VP. Publisher Partners, did say Konami is on board and that they will be releasing an upcoming social game on Zynga’s game platform in the future.
This means that Zynga.com will have a total of at least eleven social games on their platform this year. Five games of their own (CityVille, Words with Friends, Hidden Chronicles, CastleVille, and Zynga Poker and six third party titles (games from Row Sham Bow, Mob Science, and Sava Transmedia and the three above).
Zynga is offering game partners three benefits to work with them on their platform: One, is the front-end promotion and access to its millions of game players. Two, is it’s back-end. Games can be hosted on its Z-Cloud, which is optimized for social games (and the up-and-down scale issues). Three, and most interesting to me, is the Analytics piece. Zynga is offering game develoepers the opportunity to leverage its analytics tools to optimize games for monetization and growth.
The first piece, distribution, is valuable but something that Facebook, Apple, and Google offers for their platforms and devices. The hosting and analytics pieces are unique. The question is, does the additional value Zynga offers increase revenues enough to offset the amount of money a game developer has to pay Zynga to be part of their platform.
And, what exactly is the cost of getting your game on Zynga’s platform? That, we still don’t know.
