Facebook's gaming business is growing stronger: a reliance on Zynga to reduce

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Lead: US technology it web site CNET wrote today that while Facebook earns little from the gaming business, the business is critical to the company's future development.

The following is the full text of the article:

A few months ago, Facebook and Zynga lifted a special relationship. But now, the unthinkable has happened: Facebook's gaming business has reached an unprecedented level.

Facebook's gaming platform reached its all-time best performance from January to March, earning about $213 million by paying for business, up 15% from a year earlier.

Facebook's gaming revenues are small in overall business, and game profits seem doomed to fall. When a user buys a digital product in a game on a Web page, the social network pulls a 30% split, but Facebook is not profitable on a mobile platform where users stay longer. However, Apple and Google will still take a certain share of Facebook's app-purchase income.

However, because Facebook's strategy is to attract different kinds of developers, it can avoid the impact of the poor performance of any studio, thus achieving excellent performance.

Real purpose

Facebook's quarterly revenue and advertising revenue reached $1.25 billion trillion in the first quarter, compared to the size of the game business.

Even so, Michael Pachter, an analyst at the US securities brokerage, Wedbush that the game is just a means to an end, which is to enhance user stickiness. The so-called user stickiness, refers to let more people through the desktop or mobile platform to use Facebook, and increase the use of time. "Facebook just wants to add more options to the user. "Pacht said.

He does have a point, and games can enhance Facebook users ' activity, satisfaction, and attract them to return more frequently. Sean Ryan, the Facebook gaming co-Shawn Ryan, also acknowledged this in a media interview. But Ryan said it would be a big mistake to think that Facebook couldn't increase its revenue.

"The game is our important business. "The breadth of this business is greater than our imagination," said Ryan. ”

The company has publicly disclosed its revenue payments. But privately, the company believes that how to get 250 million players to interact with social networks and how to increase the level of social networking activity is as important as how to increase revenue from other businesses. Facebook has not disclosed how much of a percentage of gamers have bought desktop ads and mobile apps to install ads – a popular emerging ad that has been largely used by game developers to raise the visibility of mobile apps – but Ryan says developers ' advertising spending is still high.

Regime

Not so long ago, Facebook was a world of Zynga. The leisure-gaming studio, which has been the leader of Facebook's gaming platform, has been launching the blockbuster products again and again, and has contributed 12% of its revenue to Facebook in 2011 years. The data, which was disclosed before the Facebook IPO, shows that Facebook's profits depend heavily on Zynga, which is a concern for investors.

But in hindsight, that worry seemed a bit silly. Zynga lost its dominance of the Facebook game last week, according to AppData, a market research firm, who was overtaken by the developer King of the Candy Smash Saga (Candy Crush Saga). The change comes at a time when a new group of Facebook game publishers, such as social point and pretty, are emerging.

The pattern overturns the game and developer diversification strategy that Facebook started a few years ago. According to Ryan, Facebook ushered in a new set of developers and a new set of games, especially last year.

All this suggests that Facebook no longer needs Zynga.

The Facebook team, originally managed by a small American team, has now expanded to include teams across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. To keep up the momentum, Facebook is now assigning a business manager and a product engineer to each of its top developers to help them better develop their products and improve their level of satisfaction.

Powerful mechanism

Pacht said that Facebook played a positive role in the process of promoting games to players and helping them share activities with friends, and that it was a variety of flagship games. Pacht that because Facebook can decide who can see which game and how often it is, the mechanism is strong, and Zynga has to rely on this ability to become a public company from obscurity.

Facebook admits to helping game developers with social networking strategies. But according to the company, which game can become a fist game depends entirely on the ability of developers to use a variety of channels, including news feeds, mobile platforms, announcements, advertising and so on.

Ryan calls the News feed "The Holy Land", and when the game-related content is presented to 1.11 billion of Facebook users, it can help obscure games to spread the virus.

According to AppData data, pretty simple developed the "criminal case" game on Facebook has 34.5 million active users. Ryan said the game took full advantage of the news Feed and created an excellent update.

Meanwhile, the success of the Candy Smash Saga, which has 45.5 million active users on Facebook, has benefited from a synchronized experience on desktop and mobile devices, as well as some smart social tools that force players to seek help from Facebook friends.

Move Puzzles

But what if Facebook is better able to help smaller game developers achieve the same level of exposure? Can the company act as a catalyst, launch a sensational game, attract more players and generate more revenue? The mobile game distribution program that Facebook is testing may answer these questions.

The pilot project will provide distribution services to small mobile game developers, which means the social network will provide application marketing and distribution channels, according to TechCrunch, the US technology blog. The company is expected to do so through its own apps, and to take some of the revenue from the future. The project will create direct revenue for Facebook for the first time through mobile gaming.

"We're looking for other ways to help developers succeed on the mobile platform," says Ryan. We do not yet know how to achieve this goal. "In addition, Ryan refused to disclose more details of the mobile distribution project," he said.

As users migrate from the desktop to the mobile end, Facebook seems to need to figure out how to make money from mobile gaming as quickly as possible, rather than just using the desktop to pay for revenue.

A spokesman for the company said: "Developers have introduced the game to the mobile side, but thanks to the user's demand for desktop games, our payment revenue from the game will continue to grow." "It's clear that core games, including 3D games, are driving the growth of Facebook's desktop gaming business and attracting a number of different players," he said.

But Facebook is clearly unwilling to continue to share revenue with Apple and Google. Facebook's focus on gaming shows that the company will certainly try to increase the dynamics of mobile gaming. (Si yuan)