UPDATED 11:39 EDT / OCTOBER 12 2011

Zynga Diversifies Beyond Facebook as Gaming Industry Spreads

Recap: Zynga, the company that brought new twists to online gaming,  partnered with Google and brought some of their games, CityVille and Texas Hold’em Poker, to Google+ but with the expensive build of their game, Empires and Allies, Zynga suffered a 90% profit decline in their second quarter net income.

Now, to make up for the setback, they are planning to diversify beyond Facebook by making a site where gamers can play their online games though their 150 million gamers play via Facebook.

Michael Cai, an analyst from Interpret, a Santa Monica-based research firm said, “The message to investors is that Zynga has big plans to significantly grow its business via platforms other than Facebook.”

The gaming network they plan on launching is dubbed as Zynga Direct or Project Z.  Facebook gamers can start a game in the social network and continue playing it at the gaming site, or vice versa, so gamers don’t lose their progress.  In order to do this, gamers will have their own zTags, identity tags that will identify players across gaming platforms.  Gamers can now reserve their preferred zTags here.

Additionally, Zynga also launched a few more addicting games that everyone will surely love.  Serious gamers will be enticed with the sequel of Mafia Wars, their mob-based “enterprise”  game.  Mafia Wars 2 brings the familiarity of the original game with new worlds to dominate and spread crime and mischief to.

“Our goal with Mafia Wars 2 was to build on the Mafia Wars franchise in a way that feels familiar to our loyal players, yet provides a brand new world of criminal mischief to explore,” said Erik Bethke, general manager, Mafia Wars 2. “The game makes fighting a visceral, social experience and wraps it in a story and art style that we think our players will love. Believe us when we say that Mafia Wars 2 is unlike anything Zynga has released before. We can’t wait to let our players in on the social mayhem.”

They’ve added CastleVille to their -Ville franchise, which is set in a medieval-fantasy world where “The characters you meet and the decisions you make in ‘CastleVille’ affect the mysterious locations you discover, and the rare items you reveal.”

Zynga Chief Executive Mark Pincus also unveiled other games during their press event in their San Francisco headquarters. These games are:  “Zynga Bingo,” a bingo game set in Las Vegas that will be part of a larger “Zynga Casino” setting, and the seek-and-find game “Hidden Chronicles.”  Also look out for an exotic animal-collecting game called “Dream Zoo,” slated to arrive in Apple’s App Store soon, and the mobile game “Mafia Wars ShakeDown” along with three games for Facebook’s new mobile apps site: “Zynga Poker Mobile Web,” “Words With Friends HTML5” and “FarmVille Express.”

As for their IPO, Zynga declines to comment as to when this will happen.  Analysts aren’t too worried about Zynga’s IPO, as the company has patient investors who could wait it out until the market has favorable conditions.  Besides, they still deem Zynga as profitable, noting Zynga’s net income of $28 million on $597 million in revenue last year.

 


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