Social gaming titan Zynga has announced Zynga With Friends, a social network with support for realtime multiplayer games. It also confirmed that it was developing a sequel to Facebook smash FarmVille, and signalled its intent to take on EA's The Sims Social with a similar game, The Ville.
The announcements were made at the Zynga Showcase event yesterday and reported by VentureBeat. In addition to realtime multiplayer, Zynga With Friends features a unified lobby, with friends lists, games and chat on a single screen and accessible from any device.
Little was revealed about FarmVille 2, a sequel to the game which did so much to help Zynga become the most popular developer on Facebook. The Ville, meanwhile, bore substantial similarity to EA's The Sims Social - one of the few games to reach Zynga-levels of Facebook success - prompting EA spokesperson Jeff Brown to say: "Just once, can Zynga publish a game they didn't clone from another developer?"
Also announced were Zynga Elite Slots, a cross-platform casino game, and restaurant management sim ChefVille. Investors, however, were unimpressed, and Zynga's stock was down five per cent at the close of trading, to $5.76 per share.
Source: VentureBeat
Comments
1At first I thought, "Hmm, if Zynga pulls all their 'gamers' from Facebook, maybe Facebook would improve!" Then I realized that Facebook is done anyway as so many Zynga impersonators would swoop in to try to pick up their slack. :/