The multi-billion dollar industry of social gaming - games played on social networks such as Facebook- is drastically consolidating.
Besides large firms that buy smaller player for the obvious growth reasons, the author indicates that it has become much harder for producers to market their products. Sites such as Facebook have recently blocked producers from sending updates to existing customers, requiring the producers to run new ad campaigns over Facebook to promote the new product.
Companies such as Zynga Playdom, and Electronic Arts start dominating the market. Playdom has bougt 50 smaller rivals since last August, whereas the latter has bought Playfish of the UK for $400m last year.
1 comment:
I think consolidation of online gaming is stemming from huge network effects and also causing traditional gaming to decrease in popularity i.e: "words with friends" app on iPhone is so much better than the Scrabble app! When I play poker on my iPhone I would rather play against people I know (or don't know), rather than an automated system.
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