‘No Specific Plans’ To Make Console, Handheld Videogames—Zynga

SAN FRANCISCO -- Zynga is “always looking at new platforms” but the social game company has “no specific plans” to make titles for any of the console or handheld videogame platforms, Chief Game Designer Brian Reynolds told us Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

Zynga is “platform agnostic,” and is targeting “anyplace where you can be social” and play games, Reynolds said. The consoles “tend to be a lot nichier” platforms, he said. While many people own an Xbox 360, many more -- nearly everybody -- has a mobile phone and computer, he said. Zynga would only make console games “if we felt like it was social” first and foremost, he said. The company would be more likely to make titles for the handheld videogame platforms than the home consoles, but Zynga has no current plans to make games for the Nintendo or Sony systems either, he said. “Handhelds sound more likely” though, he said. “We're not going to get into the AAA, non-social” videogame space.

"There’s big potential for the future in mobile social,” Reynolds said. Zynga has already provided various games, including versions of its Facebook hit FarmVille, for mobile devices including those from Apple. But it plans to boost the number of titles it makes for those platforms, as well as offer “more innovation” in those platforms, Reynolds said. “This is going to be a big year for us in mobile,” he said. “More than anything, Words With Friends kind of points the direction for us” in mobile, he said, calling that “one of the biggest mobile games on iPhone."

Zynga will use Google Android-based games to extend the reach of its social networking titles on mobile devices, Reynolds told us last month at the International Toy Fair in New York (CED Feb 16 p1). Android represents “a huge growth point” for Zynga, a company spokeswoman said at GDC.

But Zynga’s plans aren’t nearly as aggressive when it comes to Windows Mobile 7 and BlackBerry. The company hasn’t made games for either platform. It’s just “harder to make games” for BlackBerry devices in particular, he said, in part because the devices seem to be optimized more for e-mailing than other applications. Despite Zynga’s growth expectations for Android, he said it remains “easier to hit a larger crowd on the iPhone” than for any other smartphones now. Consumers who opt to buy an iPhone are often picking it because of the many games and other applications available for it, he said. “It’s an easier crowd” to reach, he said. When you develop games for the iPhone, the designer knows there’s a “one-screen touch pad, always full color, always the same platform for everybody, one store, one this, one that,” he said.

Reynolds wouldn’t say if Zynga had an 80 percent social game market share as Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said early this week (CED March 3 p8), saying only: “We are proud of our market share and it is substantial.” EA said it was No. 2 in Facebook games now via its Playfish division, and Riccitiello said his company was becoming Zynga’s main rival. But Reynolds said there was “a very close run for number two” in social games among EA, Digital Chocolate and Disney’s Playdom. “They're all kind of like neck-and-neck for number two,” and it varied day by day, he said. Asked if Zynga had any concerns about any of its rivals gaining share, he said “we like to be as concerned as possible because it makes us work harder,” but “we're certainly not in a competition reactive” state. Zynga is “certainly out front, and therefore we have to lead,” he said.

Reynolds disputed the idea that there’s less room now for people to make a living in the game industry after the growing shift to small, digital games and away from packaged games. “We're really just kind of more in a platform shift,” he said. The AAA console game industry “has been shrinking for a couple of years,” he said. He predicted it won’t disappear, but it’s “not going to be as big as it used to be in the grand scheme.” He said, “There’s been this huge market that just came out of nowhere,” pointing to Zynga only being created about three years ago. “There’s a huge growing market in mobile games [also]. So, what I've seen is fast growth and lots of opportunity in the mobile space and the social space.” There’s “opportunity for everybody” in those spaces, and “we don’t have layoffs and we do have bonuses -- all the good things that you hope for,” he said. Zynga hired more than 800 people in 2010 and now has more than 1,500 employees scattered over 14 global locations, although most are located at its San Francisco headquarters, the company said. It’s also “always been profitable from the beginning,” he said. But he said Digital Chocolate and Playdom are “growing, too.” Disney, however, recently cut about 200 jobs in its Disney Interactive Media Group, mostly in its console game business (CED Jan 27 p9).