Startup Zynga
Zynga will acquire OMGPOP for an estimated $200 million, adding the popular application “Draw Something” to it’s already impressive portfolio of addictive games played on Facebook and smartphones. But Zynga’s immediate acquisition of OMGPOP gave some investors a bit of uneasiness.
In some ways, the move was sensible. The acquisition squandered the threat of Zynga being upstaged in its early IPO stage. And consider that Draw Something had been downloaded over 35 million times, with an average of 3,000 drawings completed per second, it’s no wonder Zynga wanted to be in on the action.
Some people call the acquisition an ugly precedent. OMGPOP came out of nowhere to top the list of Apple’s most downloaded games, but it won’t be the first company to do so. Will Zynga buy them out one by one?
Once again, Zynga is delaying the inevitable. It won’t be able to snap up every flavor-of-the-month app that bubbles up to the top — and bubble up they will.”
It also serves as a reminder that Zynga had acquired a number of developers in its short history, including Newtoy, the developers of Words With Friends. In fact, Zynga hasn’t created a blockbuster game of their own in quite some time.
Looking ahead, there will be more popular games on the market than Draw Something and Words With Friends, we just don’t know what it will be yet.
So lets say it like this: Maybe Zynga will own one of the games. Maybe it won’t.
Its just money…