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Zynga Acquires Japanese Developer Unoh
Zynga confirmed tonight that it has accelerated its plans to enter Japan by buying a local social game developer called Unoh. Nikkei reported yesterday that the price was around $11.6 million (subscription required), although Zynga isn’t saying more. Unoh is almost a decade old, with a few hit games of its own, though nothing at the scale Zynga enjoys in the United States. One of its games, a city builder called Machitsuku, has three million users on the mobile social platform Mixi , according to TechCrunch . The Mixi connection helps explain how Zynga may have come to acquire Unoh.FarmVille Expanding To iPhone, iPad, Android, SMS - Virtual Good
Evidence surfaced this week that makes it seem very likely that Zynga will soon expand its hit FarmVille game to the iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms, while also adding support for SMS gameplay. Zynga has purchased the domains FarmVilleAndroid.com, FarmVilleiPad.com, FarmVilleiPhone.com, and FarmVilleSMS.com according to information found by Internet sleuthing site Superannuation . While Zynga is not named explicitly in the domain registrar info listed on Superannuation, the site did confirm that whoever purchased the new domains also purchased Farmville.com, FarmVille's official Web site. While it's easy to guess at the role SMS will play in FarmVille thanks to Mafia Wars , it's less clear what the other versions of FarmVille might be like.
Zynga Rolls Out Pre-Paid Game Cards At Major Retailers
Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More Massively popular game Zynga is now selling pre-paid game cards at a number of major retailers in the U.S., including 7-Eleven, Best Buy, GameStop and Target. Gift certificates to spend money on Zynga games, FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille, will be sold at more than 12,800 stores.
Despite long-standing speculation on the subject, this week Zynga CEO Mark Pincus stated that Zynga would not be pursuing an IPO in the near future. He cites the $219 million that in investment that Zynga has raised through numerous rounds (but primarily from Russian backer DST ) as the main reason why. Zynga is expected to generate $460 million in revenue this year, with 90% of that being generated through sales of virtual goods and currency to players. Chinese MMOs that monetize through virtual goods like Shanda and Changyou generated tremendous funds through IPOs last year.
Pincus Says No IPO For Zynga - Virtual Goods News
Connecting the world through games
NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO – March 21, 2012 – Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA), the world’s leading provider of social game services, today announced it has acquired New York-based social game developer OMGPOP, makers of the popular cultural hit mobile game, Draw Something, and ove
Zynga, the leading social gaming company behind Facebook hits such as Farmville and Mafia Wars, would likely be worth as much as $5 billion if it were publicly traded instead of privately held, according to SecondShares.com, a group of former equity analysts who spend their time researching the value of private online companies such as Zynga, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. SecondShares based its estimate of Zynga’s value on the number of outstanding shares, estimated revenue per user, growth rate and other metrics, and projected that by 2015 the game maker could have a theoretical market value as high as $10 billion. Given the pent-up demand that such private companies represent, there’s a lot of interest in valuing them — since there is a chance they could go public someday — and also in trading their shares through secondary markets, although Facebook recently barred its employees from selling their stock through such vehicles.
Say What? Yes, You Heard Right – Zynga Could Be Worth $5 Billion
Today Chinese online gaming firm Tencent announced that it had invested $300 million in the Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies, a company known in the virtual goods space primarily for its large investments last year in Facebook and Zynga . Tencent is the largest online gaming firm in China, which reported $1.8 billion in revenue in 2009. (Pearl Research recently reported the more modest sum of $792 million for Tencent in 2009.) Tencent's investment in Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian Internet company, marks the beginning of a long-term strategic partnership between the two companies, which plan to share information regarding the workings of their respective Internet markets. The $300 million investment will be paid in cash and will give Tencent a 10% interest in DST.
Tencent Invests $300M In Zynga, Facebook Backer DST - Virtual Go
It seems Zynga 's recent games partnership with Facebook won't be an exclusive one. This morning the social games developer announced a deal with Yahoo that would integrates Zynga's social games into the global Yahoo network. This partnership will give Zynga access to Yahoo's global reach of over 600 million users. It's not entirely clear how the Yahoo implementation will work yet. The announcement contained no information in which games would go to Yahoo or whether they'd support Facebook Connect. The announcement did make it clear that users would be able to access Zynga's games through any Yahoo property, including Yahoo!
Zynga Partners With Yahoo - Virtual Goods News
Zynga Buys Tokyo-Based Startup Unoh
Dr. Serkan Toto is an independent consultant and advisor focusing on Japan’s web, mobile and social gaming industries. Based in Tokyo, he works together with financial institutions and startups worldwide.