February 10th, 2014
Via Polygon, an interesting article on Zynga’s latest casino related game:
Social and mobile game developer Zynga announced today the launch of a new slots game in its growing casino category, Riches of Olympus, which is now available for iOS devices.
While the company has experienced a series of financial losses over the past few quarters, the casino category has recently regained ground, with an eight percent growth in daily active users. Speaking to Polygon, Zynga’s executive vice president of games Barry Cottle said the company’s casino category has been growing quarter on quarter because of a strategy it implemented 18 months ago, which now shapes titles like Riches of Olympus.
The strategy involved addressing fraud issues in the casino category and regaining the trust of players by containing and managing the problem. It also focused on migrating Zynga’s games to mobile and, in cases like Riches of Olympus, developing them exclusively for mobile devices. Cottle said the number of players who play Zynga’s casino games on the web is stable, but there’s been a significant growth in the mobile space.
The third arm of the strategy is the company’s focus on building consumer-focused products with a mobile-first approach, which means it’s paying more attention to faster load times, using touch in innovative ways and listening to player feedback.
“Our expectation is we want to be the number one in the category,” Cottle said. “We’ve got a long way to go. We’re at a point now where we’re coming out of where we’ve been, so we know we’ve got a long way to go. But our expectation is for the long-term. We want to be number one in casino overall, and we want to be number one in each category.”
Zynga CEO Don Mattrick announced during an earnings call last year that the company would focus on growing its “evergreen” franchises like Zynga Poker, FarmVille and Words With Friends in 2014.
Zynga recently announced its acquisition of game developer NaturalMotion for $527 million in cash and equity.
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