Soon Zynga will release three games on mobile platforms, as part of its plan to reduce its dependency on Facebook: FarmVille 2: Country Escape, New Zynga Poker, and New Words with Friends.
FarmVille 2: Country Escape is a new game in the FarmVille franchise, with a coastal setting and, for the first time, an offline mode.
New Words with Friends and New Zynga Poker look to be basically the same. Zynga Poker will apparently “get you to the fun faster,” and Words with Friends – which began its life as a smash hit on iOS before Zynga got its mitts on the word game–adds a dictionary. The bottom line: there aren’t huge new features here.
“These new mobile games are for you, by you. We listened closely to all of your feedback over the years and leveraged your insights to create new experiences that honor the games you’ve come to love, yet deliver the fresh unique features and gameplay you’ve been asking for,” Zynga COO Clive Downie wrote in a note to fans Monday.
Innovation (of a type) made Zynga a success. I’m not a fan of Zynga’s approach to gaming, but I’m not above acknowledging that FarmVille brought a number of concepts to the mainstream consumer – energy bars with real-time counters, easy-to-learn mechanics, bite-size play sessions, and social features.
Monday’s announcement basically says that for its big push into mobile gaming spurred by last year’s arrival of former Xbox guru Don Mattrick as the company’s new CEO, Zynga plans to rely on versions of three games that are more than half a decade old and still have large player counts and are well-liked. However, this announcement reiterates something that’s seemed clear about Zynga for a while now: despite an incredibly talented roster of developers, the company has a hard time hatching new hits, making it over-reliant on past successes.
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