Zynga Looks Towards Gambling Strategy as Stock Crashes
First titles to arrive in 2013.
Zynga is hoping that a jump to real-money gaming will help save its bottom line, as the company scrambles to recover from a financial earnings call that saw investors dump stock en masse.
The social games publisher, best known for Facebook games such as FarmVille, had posted a net loss of $22.8 million for its second fiscal quarter. Compare this with dismal figures for the same period last year - a profit of $1.4 million for Q2 2011.
Unsurprisingly, investors freaked out over the news, with Zynga's stock dropping as sharply as 41 per cent over the course of the evening. A bit of rallying saw the stock spike back up to previous levels, but at time of publication it's not looking good.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus described the poor financials as a result of "short term challenges" - which he hopes to overcome by introducing a selection of online gambling titles for the social gaming platform. The first of these were timetabled to arrive in the first half of 2013.
"What we’ve said, and what we have to announce today, is that we have our first products in development and that we intend to release them in markets that are regulated and open, subject to our getting licensing," Pincus said. "The US is obviously an attractive market, but it’s not an open, regulated environment today."
Via TechCrunch
The social games publisher, best known for Facebook games such as FarmVille, had posted a net loss of $22.8 million for its second fiscal quarter. Compare this with dismal figures for the same period last year - a profit of $1.4 million for Q2 2011.
Unsurprisingly, investors freaked out over the news, with Zynga's stock dropping as sharply as 41 per cent over the course of the evening. A bit of rallying saw the stock spike back up to previous levels, but at time of publication it's not looking good.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus described the poor financials as a result of "short term challenges" - which he hopes to overcome by introducing a selection of online gambling titles for the social gaming platform. The first of these were timetabled to arrive in the first half of 2013.
"What we’ve said, and what we have to announce today, is that we have our first products in development and that we intend to release them in markets that are regulated and open, subject to our getting licensing," Pincus said. "The US is obviously an attractive market, but it’s not an open, regulated environment today."
Via TechCrunch