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Japan’s Softbank Partners With Zynga and Invests 150 Million
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Japan’s wireless carrier company, Softbank, has invested 150 million in a business arrangement with Zynga, the developers of FarmVille.
The investment will serve as a base for Zynga to develop and provide social games in Japan. Softbank CEO, Masayoshi Son, has visions of working together with Zynga and creating a “social game powerhouse” he said ,”Zynga is a leader in social games and I am delighted to partner with them to introduce their social games to Japan…We share the same vision as Zynga.”
Mark Pincus, Zynga CEO and founder said of the new partnership, “We’re excited to partner with Softbank to bring Zynga’s social games to Japan and gain insights from the Japanese market… As one of the most innovative technology companies in the world, Softbank is bringing the mobile Internet to consumers making the social Web more accessible to people everywhere.”
Source: Mercury News
Tags: facebook.com, farmville.com, farmvillefreak.com, news, softbank, zynga
Posted on August 1st, 2010 at 10:29 pm
holy ****, zynga is taking over the world XD
Posted on August 1st, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Ichiban-desu.
Posted on August 1st, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Zynga is awsome! Love their games!
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 12:08 am
150 million maybe they can employ somebdy to read the podcast on time for once, or some compitent tekkies to sort all the glitches because clearly that stuff wasnt affordable before this haha
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 2:19 am
I agree with Chardy. With all this money, NOW can they finally give us some decent NON farmcash items? AT LEAST FOR A WEEK?! They could’ve at least given us like a free google horse or something xD when google invested 1 million or something.
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 5:14 am
Hmm.. SoftBank is the exclusive retailer for the iPhone in Japan…150M makes more sense now
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 6:30 am
Risky venture, given the nature of most gamers. On to the next game after a year or so, especially if the increase in pay items continues.
I’ve already dropped two games because of this.
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 1:44 pm
i wonder if this is going to turn out like walle Zynga takes over the world and everybody becomes fat…
Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 7:06 am
New craft feature needs sake lovers.
Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Maybe a real game developer should partner with Zynga and create engaging game play mechanics that are not reiterations of the same thing again and again. I suspect they are constantly losing users because their games end up boring you. FV has barely been out for more than a year and little has improved. Items available increase, but space to put them does not. There is little they can do while working with Flash, they are pushing the limits of acceptable game speed and load times now. Frontierville showed some promise, but so far is the same thing, a tiny space that constantly fills up without your attention. The games encourage you to add numerous pseudo-friends to further yourself and request items.
There is little choice in how you play the games, they are too linear. To accomplish a goal you are not even faced with multiple choices that have certain advantages or disadvantages. It is one path every time, unless you want to pay. The fact that you are paying them for something in their games does not net you any substantial reward or status you might be looking for.
Unless they change their game engine and come up with some compelling game mechanics that reward ingenuity and strategy I think they are lost as a company and they’ll alienate most casual and “serious” gamers. They are hot due to buzz and numbers, but to any who really follow gaming the writing is on the wall.