...Mark Pincus founded Zynga, a social game service provider company, in 2007. During the first few years, Zynga was very successful and generated a profit of almost $100 million with successful games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and CityVille. However, in 2013, the number of Zynga users was rapidly decreasing. According to AppData, the MAUs (Monthly Average Users) for Zynga have fallen below 127 million, which was the lowest it has ever been. In addition, stock prices dropped from $14 to $3 per share causing a net loss of almost $600 million. As a result Pincus was kicked off the board and replaced by another CEO. Now Pincus has returned to Zynga in hopes of turning the company back around, but the problem is how and in which market should Pincus choose to do so in. Pincus has already started to make some changes with his return, but Zynga needs to do a lot more if it wants to compete again. Analysts have made recommendations but Zynga needs to flat out create new hit games. Currently, Zynga has two opportunities that will decide which path they take: One route involves selling to a private investor to complete its turnaround behind closed doors. The other route is where Zynga makes big financial bets on building potential mega-hits and stays public. The first strategy Zynga has is to stay public, and not sell to a private investor. At their current price, yes, Zynga can go private, but it doesn’t mean that will happen. There are four main benefits for Zynga to stay public and...
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...Mark Pincus On Why Zynga Stumbled - Earnings Call 0 comments, 0 called-out + Comment now + Comment now Mark Pincus (Photo credit: Joi) Zynga didn’t execute on its recent new games and it underestimated the speed of mobile adoption, which led to its current problems, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in a conference call with analysts following its earnings release Wednesday. Forbes Staff In part to bring back its high growth, Zynga plans to launch two new web games per quarter and four games per quarter in 2013. It also plans to expand to other genres such as casino games and “player versus player” conflict games, Pincus said. Zynga underperformed due to two factors, Pincus said. First, the company didn’t execute well on web games such as CityVille and CastleVille. The company found it “more challenging” to maintain its historical games and it had a “faster decline in bookings than expected.” Or to put it simply, “We didn’t create enough heat for players” in content and features, Pincus said. Also the company didn’t bring new games to market fast enough to offset the declines from the older games. Secondly, mobile adoption was faster than Zynga expected. That increased competition for Zynga’s users. Still Pincus pointed to successes in its web games FarmVille 2 and ChefVille. FarmVille 2 had 17 million installs in its first 21 days. On the key mobile sector, Pincus said mobile now represents 20% of Zynga’s bookings. The company also reorganized its staff so that...
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