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Would EA venture into real-money online gambling? Dean Takahashi VentureBeat

Would EA venture into real-money online gambling? Dean Takahashi VentureBeat | Poker & eGaming News | Scoop.it

Social gaming giant Zynga has announced it will move into real-money online gambling in early 2013. Electronic Arts has a big stake in casual social casino games such as Lucky Gem Casino Slots, and it has a relationship with the World Series of Poker TV series.

 

But it hasn’t decided yet whether to add real-money gambling to those games, according to Frank Gibeau (pictured below), the president of EA Labels and the head of the company’s game development efforts. It would be easy to do, but there’s a lot of discussion about the complexity it would add to the business and whether it’s the right thing to do culturally, Gibeau said.

 

“The leap from [social casino games] to real money is conceptually small, but it is a complicated one,” Gibeau said. “It’s a world market issue. There is a lot of U.S. regulation. There are fully regulated markets all over Europe and some emerging in Asia. I do thing real-money will be a growth driver for gaming. I have nothing to announce. We’re following the trends and events in real money. “

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Zynga battles to dominate the red ocean, not the blue, Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat

Zynga battles to dominate the red ocean, not the blue, Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat | Poker & eGaming News | Scoop.it

Zynga might roll right over its competitors in those categories because it’s the big kahuna of social games. It’s a perfectly good strategy for a market leader, and it’s worked for Zynga before.

 

Zynga showed only its “red ocean” strategy, not a “blue ocean strategy.” Zynga is charging head-on at its rivals, fighting for market share with the sharks as they go after the meat (in this case, Facebook players) in the bloody red ocean. The concept here was chronicled in 2005 in the book “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. In a red ocean battle, the market share is fixed, and competitors fight each other for it in a zero-sum game. But in the blue ocean, where there are no competitors, a company can be successful by expanding the size of the market.

 

Just about every title that Zynga announced was in direct competition with a rival. The Ville, introduced by game designer Mark Skaggs above, is squarely aimed at taking players away from Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social. By the same token, EA’s own SimCity Social is aimed at Zynga’s CityVille. That’s a red ocean fight. With bubble shooter titles such as Bubble Safari and Ruby Blast, Zynga is going after rival King.com, which has soared in popularity in the last year with games that have short, one-minute gameplay times, much like arcade titles. And with its Matching with Friends game, Zynga is going after Wooga’s Diamond Dash and PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz.

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Peak Games grows to No. 3 social gaming firm by focusing on the Middle East

Peak Games grows to No. 3 social gaming firm by focusing on the Middle East | Poker & eGaming News | Scoop.it

Peak Games, a publisher that focuses on emerging markets for games such as the Middle East, says it has become the third-largest social game publisher on a worldwide basis.

 

Daily active users worldwide on Facebook:

Zynga: 56 million
King.com: 12 million

Peak Games: 9.7 million = 5,7 own + 4 million from sister companies

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Wooga and PopCap pull games from Google+, PocketGamer

Social games specialist Wooga has announced it is to pull several of its games (Monster World, Diamond Dash, and Bubble Island) from Google+, following claims users are nowhere near as active on the social network as they are on Facebook. The news comes as PopCap moves to retire Bejeweled Blitz from the platform on 18 June.

 

The departures will leave Google+ with just 40 games in all. The impact of said announcements is tempered somewhat, however, by the news that prominent Facebook games are currently losing players as consumers are increasingly drawn to mobile platforms.

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