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Zynga closes Japanese branch, kills off 11 social games
Zynga closes Japanese branch, kills off 11 social games
 

January 2, 2013   |   By Mike Rose

Comments 3 comments

More: Social/Online, Smartphone/Tablet, Business/Marketing, Recruitment





As Zynga scrambles to cut costs, the company is closing down its Japanese branch, and has also shut down nearly a dozen of its social games.

Zynga is currently shifting its budget and resource allocations around, with ongoing efforts to improve its profitability in both browser games and mobile games.

A notice on the website for Zynga Japan states that the company will be dissolved on January 31, 2013. Zynga Japan was originally founded in 2010 as a collaboration between Zynga and Softbank.

The joint venture was hoping to tap into Japan's history of gaming, while leveraging Softbank's mobile and web technology.

Meanwhile, Zynga also killed off 11 of its online games during December -- again, in a bid to reduce its costs such that it can focus on new titles.

According to TechCrunch, those games closed down include Mafia Wars 2, PetVille and Indiana Jones Adventure World.
 
 
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Comments

Michael Gribbin
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I think this is really interesting because Zynga closed a lot of their earlier games and its certainly nothing new for them to close a game down. But shutting down Petville which had a pretty big following and a lot of content just seems like it will make people wary about spending money in a Zynga game. It could be shut down if its not super popular~

Now you might argue that most of their audience will be unaware of this news and might not even know the shut down games ever existed, but even still, I think this has got to hurt them in the long run. No?

GameViewPoint Developer
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I suspect they are simply cutting games that are not going anywhere, and double downing on what has the most potential for growth. They expanded too quickly, launched too many games, the new approach (which is the right one) seems to be more focused on sure things.

Michael Joseph
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Just a tactical withdrawal and redeployment of forces closer to Mordor. Feeling fine...


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