Zynga With Friends Created With The Acquisition Of Newtoy
December 2, 2010
After a "long road to get [there]", Newtoy has come to an agreement for an acquisition by Zynga. Despite having somewhat different approaches, both companies understand the goal is the same. In a blog post today, Newtoy gives a brief explanation for the collaboration and history of the decision.
On the flip-side, Zynga had their own praise through an official press release for the new team effort.
"The Games With Friends franchise is the best social game experience available on mobile today and we are excited to welcome the Newtoy team to the Zynga family," said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. "The Zynga With Friends Studio will continue to invent great mobile social game experiences for Zynga users everywhere."The "Games With Friends" franchise includes very popular titles like Words With Friends, Chess With Friends, and We Rule. Chess With Friends and Words With Friends is more of a one-on-one approach to social-networking, whereas We Rule follows Zynga's large community involvement approach to the social gaming market. Paul Bettner, Newtoy CEO and co-founder, remains in a senior management role by becoming the vice president and general manager of the new Zynga With Friends Studio. Mr. Bettner will report to Zynga mobile's senior vice president David Ko.
"We're reinventing the way people are social on their mobile devices," said Paul Bettner, VP and GM of The Zynga With Friends Studio. "The Zynga With Friends Studio will build on the Newtoy legacy of creating approachable, highly social games that are accessible to anyone from anywhere."
“Zynga is committed to providing the best of breed mobile game experience and we expect The Zynga With Friends Studio to deepen our bench of seasoned veterans and broaden our scope of mobile game development," said Ko. "The mobile industry is still in its infancy and we're excited about the opportunity ahead of us."This likely doesn't mean much for Zynga's current games, like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Word Scramble Challenge Edition, but could make for some interesting future releases. Zynga holds the position of the largest social game developer worldwide. More than 215 million users are actively playing their 10 major games, which involve 13 game studios in 5 countries. A huge presence on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, Zynga has spanned their success by expanding these community involved titles to the iOS platform. While it could be some time before any of this makes any major shifts, what sorts of things would you hope to have improved by this new cooperative effort?