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We like opinions at ZO. That's why we've asked the team to share their thoughts on whats happening in the world of media, right here on this blog.

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18 Aug 2010
August 18th, 10:32am 0 comments

More companies buy into the social gaming space

Social_gaming

Social gaming has been a huge buzzword in the digital mediascape during the last 12 - 18 months. This is going to be even more so with the influx of recent social gaming publisher acquisitions.
  • November 2009 - EA games acquires Playfish for approximately US$300 million. This would provide them with a robust gaming app library such as Pet Society and Restaurant City across platforms such as Facebook, myspace, Bebo, Android, and iPhone.  
EA Games is the leading mobile games publisher with a current 34% market share in the US alone, and also a leading games publisher on Apple's app store (Rock Band, Madden, The Sims). The Playfish acquisition is a win-win situation for them, given that Playfish alone records over 1 billion play sessions globally per month.
  • May 2010 - Zynga (Farmville, Mafia Wars) and Facebook negotiate strategic terms on "facebook credits" as a form of currency across their suite of games. They have settled on a 5 year agreement.
  • July 2010 - Google invests US$100 million in Zynga
  • July 2010 - Disney acquires Playdom for approximately US$563 million, the largest amount of money paid so far for a social gaming company.
  • August 2010 - Google buys Slide for just over US$200 million.
I suspect Google could be leveraging off this acquisition, not only to get into the gaming space on social networks, but also to beef up the current Android gaming apps suite. Reaching a larger audience via casual gaming apps on the Android platform would also render future advertising opportunities for Google. (via Ad Mob display banners or in game branded content)

Social_game_revenues

This is not surprising, given the above figures from eMarketer. Social gaming revenues are quickly becoming a big blip on the profitability radar. It rose from just US$76 million in 2008 to US$639 million the year after. Revenues for 2010 are expected to grow by 29%. Advertisers are definitely realising this huge growth in the social gaming space; advertising spend in social games could top US$220 million globally this year.

 

Filed under Gaming Google

Posted by Priscilla Lee
 
28 Jul 2010
July 28th, 6:57pm 0 comments

Tom Tom adds value to user experience with Darth and Yoda

At ZO digital, we have a little institution called "Chart of the Week", or rather COTW (Yes, we love our acronyms), where we share interesting graphs, infographics and the like.

So, here's my COTW contribution I thought I'll share on the blog.

Tom Tom and Garmin shares have pretty much been on the decline since the following:

  • advent of free navigation software like Google Maps, 
  • more and more people starting to realise that they don't need to spend the equivalent of a smartphone on a specialist device just for maps
  • costly annual subscription fees

The chart below shows Tom Tom and Garmin shares having a dip with the announcement of Google Maps software for smartphones, circa Q4 2009.

 

Google_chart_2
Tom Tom has recently tried to add value to their user experience, and hence justifying ongoing user costs with the Star Wars turn by turn voice navigation.

Darth and Yoda are sold separately of course. Put the dark side next to the light you can't.

Filed under Google brand

Posted by Priscilla Lee