Sean Ryan, the "games" guy at Facebook, gave a presentation on Facebook ecosystem at Casual Connect. According to Sean, social games have "won," given the fact that the only game companies to sell out for a high price (more than $100 million) or going public are social game companies. Citing Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, Open Feint, PopCap Games, he raises a good point. More interestingly, Sean pontificated on the game genres he wish he'd see more of on Facebook.
Last week, I speculated on what Google plans to do in terms of charging for distribution on Google Games which is coming out very shortly. Today, I spread rumors. I have heard from 3 anonymous developers in the past week that Google plans to charge 20% for micro-transactions within Google Games. This, of course, is 10% less than Facebook and their mandatory cut of 30% for Facebook Credits. If this is the case, Google is finally being smart about games and could be successful.
After a week of speculation, Zynga has filed its S-I with the SEC and officially plans to go public to raise at least $1 billion. Highlights and my insights below the fold!
Google released its latest social endeavour, Google+, this week. Unlike Google's past social attempts, Google+ is actually good, featuring a lot of what Facebook offers, Apple-inspired graphics, and a slick approach to friends and privacy ("Circles"). And according to Google's blog, they've only just begun.So, what's next? According to someone very geekly who tipped off Engadget, the source code on the Google+ site suggests it's Google Games and Questions. There literally is a reference to game invites in Google's source code.
When Raptrrecently announced an additional round of funding for a total of $27 million, I was impressed and puzzled at the same time. On the one hand, $27 million is nothing to sneeze about. On the other hand, to only boast of 8 million users (that's not active, mind you) with all that funding, is good spin but is actually sad. What is Raptr working on to justify all this funding, aside for the fact that founder Dennis "Thrash" Fong sure could play a mean game of Quake back in the day? Part of the answer was revealed today. Raptr has re-launched its web site as a social news platform. A mash-up of Digg, Facebook, and Xfire for games, the new Raptr site is very well-designed.
According to AllThingsD, Zynga, creators of CityVille and FarmVille, is planning on going public in June 2011. The company is poised to file with the SEC toward the end of this or next week.Anyone who follows the games business may be surprised by the timing, but not by the filing.
HTML5 is the next big thing, supposedly, but Facebook developers have been slow to adopt. But the upcoming Resortico, which appears to be a fairly standard tropical resort sim, proudly proclaims its HTML5 roots.
Tapjoy is the latest company to throw it's the mobile and social publishing ring. Currently, Tapjoy is a leading distribution channel for social and mobile apps. During GDC, I noted that everyone wanted to be a game app publisher.Tapjoy's publishing program (entitled "self-publishing") is different in that Tapjoy will give its app partners marketing credits to reach its millions of users in return for undisclosed business terms, obviously involving a revenue share on the back-end. Unlike other publishing programs, developers retain control of their IP, which if you ever talk to a game developers, means a lot. Tapjoy may also fund game titles as well.