I didn't think any of the statements I made were all that controversial, but a few people seem to have read too much into them.
I certainly didn't say social gaming was dead (it isn't), just that it's now getting harder to break in, especially for new players. The bar for production value has gone up a lot... games don't look like spreadsheets anymore, and take more time and money to create. Viral channels have gotten tougher to use (or abuse). There's a ton of competition from companies large and small, from 1000+ employee behemoths like Zynga/EA/Disney to the swarms of clone/pirate operators out of China and Eastern Europe. Facebook is starting to take a significant (and deserved) cut of profits via FB Credits, and as advertising becomes more necessary to promote games, another chunk there, reducing juicy margins.
As for PopCap, we're continuing to work on social games-- Zuma Blitz is releasing shortly on Facebook-- but also on other platforms, new and old. We're doing lots of stuff besides Facebook games, like tomorrow's launch of Plants vs Zombies for XBLA.
And as for us "taking our ball and going home," that's just ridiculous. Even if that was something we could theoretically do (which it isn't), we're doing very well in social right now, thank you. If you want to look up numbers on appdata.com, you'd see that by DAU (Daily Active Users, generally considered a more legitimate measure than monthly) Bejeweled Blitz, at 4.4 million DAU, is currently the #6 Facebook app, having just passed Mafia Wars. By DAU, we're the #7 developer overall, just a bit behind Playdom and Crowdstar. And this is with just one game, no advertising, and maybe 30 or so people in our social game department.
So, we'll be sticking around in social, but the point was that the days of the "Gold Rush" may be closing fast.
Jason Kapalka
I certainly didn't say social gaming was dead (it isn't), just that it's now getting harder to break in, especially for new players. The bar for production value has gone up a lot... games don't look like spreadsheets anymore, and take more time and money to create. Viral channels have gotten tougher to use (or abuse). There's a ton of competition from companies large and small, from 1000+ employee behemoths like Zynga/EA/Disney to the swarms of clone/pirate operators out of China and Eastern Europe. Facebook is starting to take a significant (and deserved) cut of profits via FB Credits, and as advertising becomes more necessary to promote games, another chunk there, reducing juicy margins.
As for PopCap, we're continuing to work on social games-- Zuma Blitz is releasing shortly on Facebook-- but also on other platforms, new and old. We're doing lots of stuff besides Facebook games, like tomorrow's launch of Plants vs Zombies for XBLA.
And as for us "taking our ball and going home," that's just ridiculous. Even if that was something we could theoretically do (which it isn't), we're doing very well in social right now, thank you. If you want to look up numbers on appdata.com, you'd see that by DAU (Daily Active Users, generally considered a more legitimate measure than monthly) Bejeweled Blitz, at 4.4 million DAU, is currently the #6 Facebook app, having just passed Mafia Wars. By DAU, we're the #7 developer overall, just a bit behind Playdom and Crowdstar. And this is with just one game, no advertising, and maybe 30 or so people in our social game department.
So, we'll be sticking around in social, but the point was that the days of the "Gold Rush" may be closing fast.
Jason Kapalka
