UPDATED 12:57 EDT / DECEMBER 02 2010

Zynga Angling for More Mobile Presence with Newtoy Acquisition

zynga-with-friends The online game publisher Zynga has been in the news a lot lately with seven acquisitions in as many months. They already dominate the landscape of Facebook and a lot of online social and casual gaming and are looking to press their way further into the mobile market. The newly acquired company, Texas-based Newtoy, produces hit games for iOS devices.

All Things D covers the initial details of the story,

David Ko, Zynga’s new head of mobile and former executive from Yahoo, said Newtoy has been successful with such hits as “Words with Friends” and “Chess with Friends.”

The Newtoy offices will become “Zynga with Friends Studio,” and will be headed by the two founding brothers, Paul and David Bettner.

Ko: “Mobile is the next great frontier for social gaming. In only five months, Farmville has been downloaded seven million times, and we have more than 10 million people a month accessing Zynga games on a mobile phone. Our goal is to have Zynga games available to anyone anywhere, on any device.”

The solid details of the deal have not been disclosed, however, so we don’t know exactly how much they sold for.

This expansion will continue Zynga’s magnetic inertia when it comes to social gaming and undoubtedly will work to spread their efforts only further. Recently the casual gaming company made a deal with American Express allowing for even more monetization of their virtual item sales (their primary revenue stream). On the flip-side, former Newtoy games don’t use virtual item revenue and instead experiment with paid subscriptions and ad-supported models.

Although, it’s not hard to see that custom (and pay) skins for chess pieces would indeed sell well to people playing “Chess with Friends” and similar games.


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