
FarmVille Juggernaut Zynga Might Leave Facebook Soon - Flemlord
http://kokugamer.com/2010/05/08/farmville-juggernaut-zynga-might-leave-facebook-soon/
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jsz0
Leaving FB near the height of their popularity is a bold and smart move.
Obviously they're going to do their own social gaming site. Why support their
new competitor? A dumber company might have tried to hedge their bet which
would have doomed their own project from the start. Doing it quick & painless
might cost them some users but probably not enough to matter in the long run.
They're a clever bunch. I bet they attribute the switch to growing Facebook
privacy concerns to trash the competition on the way out.

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steve19
Bold but risky.

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philwelch
"Bold" implies "risky", as in the old adage, "there are bold pilots and there
are old pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots".

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chime
They need iPhone/iPad versions of their main games. Only reason my parents are
on FB is because of Farmville. They cannot play Farmville on iPad yet. My
parents don't much care for FB as much as they care about Farmville. Once
Zynga makes these games available as Apple apps, lot of people will use them
on a more frequent basis. They'll probably want to share game info via FB but
the game play could be on a phone or iPad.

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teej
Zynga could have FarmVille installed on 100% of iPads and they wouldn't even
notice the user number move. 1 million iPads have been sold ever. 25 million
people will play FarmVille on Monday. The scale is completely different.

Now, if iPad users monetize better or they can be more spammy than Facebook
users, then we might be talking. But you still have to deal with keeping two
separate codebases in sync while releasing new features nearly every day.

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philwelch
iPads are at the bottom of a multi-year growth cycle. FarmVille is near the
top of its growth cycle. It may not be important today but it will probably
matter to Zynga in the 2-5 year timeframe whether they stick with Flash or
create mobile apps for touchscreen devices.

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tszming
Their competitors will be very happy

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bobbyi
They're bluffing.

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raganwald
They're bluffing the way Google was bluffing when they threatened to release
their own browser to get around browser manufacturers controlling the default
search, the way Google was bluffing when they threatened to release their own
mobile OS and phone to get around phone manufacturers controlling the default
search, maps, and other applications on phones, and the way Google is now
bluffing when they threaten to become their own top tier ISP to get around
ISPs controlling access to search or other applications.

~~~
bobbyi
I don't see how those are similar to Zynga pulling out of Facebook and
switching to "Zynga Live" which doesn't yet exist.

Google didn't "pull out" of offering their services through the established
browsers when they released their own. They didn't stop offering Google apps
on the iPhone when they released Android.

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bartl
Farmville piggybacked on FaceBook to get popular. I think such a move will
hurt both, because

* not every Farmville on FaceBook user will follow Zynga

* a lot of Farmville players only visit FaceBook for the game

On the other hand: a commission of 30% seems pretty steep.

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abraham
I don't understand why this is "Very surprising news". Why would Zynga want to
be locked to someone else's system instead of their own?

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c00p3r
FarmVille would be "a just another one of the million stupid flash game nobody
know about" without facebook.

btw, there is no market for flash-based games, but very big one of upcoming
WebGL standard.

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Malcx
There are several of us on HN who make our living from flash games. Please can
you expand on why there is no market?

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c00p3r
1\. <http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=AAPL> 2\. Android.

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illumin8
Please, let them leave. Zynga needs to die a horrible, horrible death.
Preferably, in a fire.

~~~
illumin8
What, people here seriously love Zynga? After their CEO admitted he used scam
"monthly text message plan" marketers to get most of their revenue? After he
flat out admitted that they rip off their customers any way possible to make a
quick buck?

Why should we reward such a terrible business model with success. Zynga uses
marketing partners that have more in common with organized crime than
reputable businesses.

