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澳大利亚人报关于迪士尼并购playdom公司的相关评述

发布时间:2010-08-23 12:49:48 Tags:,,,

如果你有使用Facebook等网络社交网站,你会发现越来越多的亲朋好友热衷于在线游戏。这是目前硅谷的一大热门科技产业。

近来,以网络交友为主的Facebook决定聘请一位游戏合作关系负责人。这一新职位的主要职责在于管理公司网络和游戏开发商之间的关系。

disney playdom

disney playdom

上个月,迪士尼公司耗资5亿6320万美元(折合6亿3300万澳元)并购硅谷一家新兴的游戏公司Playdom。

同周,鉴于对迪士尼的过去发展和未来规划的考虑,这家娱乐业巨头在同一时间以6亿6000万美元的价格出售了旗下的影视制作公司Miramax。

通过收购Playdom,迪士尼公司开始进军社交游戏领域——一种通过社交平台如Facebook、MySpace与朋友们互动交流的游戏。

这种新的游戏形式面向的是截然不同的游戏玩家——以年龄稍长的女性为主——不同于传统的视频游戏产业。

“社交游戏的盛行是一种主流现象,”Inside Network的分析师Justin Smith说。“社交游戏的玩家相对来说多于电脑或平台游戏的玩家。”

社交游戏囊括从简单的在线拼字游戏到模拟经营游戏,如经营一家动物园或餐厅等多种游戏类型。目前为止,Facebook是社交游戏的主要平台,占有超过90%的社交游戏流量。
Zynga公司的FarmVille是一款最著名的社交游戏,每个月有900多万游戏玩家在虚拟的田地上种植虚拟庄稼。其中,部分玩家为了在游戏中领先,愿意花费现实货币为其田地换购虚拟商品。通过这种方式,Zynga公司便能从中盈利。

根据Nielson的一份调查显示,美国人目前基本上有四分之一的上网时间是花费在社交网络网站和博客上。而澳大利亚人则更热衷于该社交媒介,他们平均每个月在上述活动上花费7小时19分钟。在世界上位列第一,并多于美国和英国一小时。

事实上,越来越受欢迎的是社交网站中的游戏,而非社交网站本身——Facebook的数据显示,每个月有2亿用户在其网站上进行社交游戏。同时Facebook也通过更新基础设施来便利用户换购虚拟货币。

据Developer Analytics的分析数据显示,位于旧金山的Zynga公司是社交游戏领域的最大玩家,吸引了多于其竞争者4倍的游戏玩家,其发布的47款游戏每月拥有2亿3270万用户。

其次是Crowdstar,该公司也位于旧金山,每月拥有活动用户5190万人次,紧追其后的是艺电有限公司(EA)旗下的Playfish,每月游戏人次达5040万。

位于加州山景城的Playdom目前在社交游戏领域排名第四,该游戏开发公司每月拥有活动用户3840万月活跃用户,其中澳大利亚占60万。按照本次迪士尼的收购价这便意味着迪士尼为向每位用户支付了14.67美元。

Inside Network的Smith认为,这一高于类似收购的价格可能最后将被证明是超值的。他说““社交游戏的发展才刚刚起步。”今年该产业的收入为8350万美元,在将来这数据将飞速增长。

迪士尼互动媒体集团的董事长Steve Wadsworth指出,迪士尼正在收购一家已在社交游戏领域取得一定地位的游戏公司,它拥有才能卓越的员工及优良的发展潜力。

事实上,迪士尼公司发展社交游戏的主动力在于将其招牌人物和角色引入Playdom游戏当中。

众所周知,迪士尼的招牌人物包括从经典的白雪公主、阿拉丁到惊奇漫画中的X-man(x战警),再到ESPN体育网上的各种体育经典人物。

Disney pays $633m to expand into social gaming

IF you use social networking sites such as Facebook, you probably see updates from your friends who appear to have taken up new interests.
What is actually going on is your friends are participating in online games that represent one of the hottest new tech industries in Silicon Valley.

Recently, Facebook, known more for networking friends, has started recruiting for a head of games partnerships, a new position just to manage the company’s burgeoning network with game developers.

And last month Disney paid $US563.2 million ($633m) for Playdom, a Silicon Valley start-up in the games sector.

In a sign of how Disney sees its past and future, the entertainment giant offloaded Miramax, the art-house film distribution company, for more than $US660m the same week.

The Playdom acquisition gives Disney entree into the emerging world of social gaming — games that people play on social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace that usually involve interaction with their friends.

“It’s a much more mainstream phenomenon,” says Justin Smith, an analyst at Inside Network. “The audience of people playing more hardcore console or PC games is comparatively smaller than the audience for social games.”

Social games range from online versions of Scrabble to games where players take on a fantasy role, such as running a zoo or restaurant. Facebook is by far the dominant platform, with over 90 per cent of the social gaming traffic, according to the developers.

The best known title is Zynga’s Farmville, which has more than 9 million players planting virtual crops on their virtual farms every month. Zynga makes money from Farmville because some players are willing to part with real cash to buy virtual goods for their farm and get ahead in the game.

A recent Nielsen survey shows Americans now spend nearly a quarter of their online time on social networking sites and blogs. And Australians are even more enthusiastic social media users, spending an average of seven hours and 19 minutes every month on these activities, the highest in the world and an hour more than the US and Britain.

And increasingly it’s the games on the sites rather than the sites themselves that are the main attraction — Facebook’s own figures show 200 million users playing games on the site every month and the site is investing in infrastructure so people can more easily convert their real-world money into virtual game goods.

San Francisco-based Zynga is the biggest player in the social gaming space, with more than four times the audience of its nearest competitor. The developer has 232.7 million monthly active users across 47 applications, according to statistics from Developer Analytics.

Next is San Francisco-based Crowdstar with 51.9 million monthly active users, followed by Electronic Arts-owned Playfish with 50.4 million.

The Australian audience is usually close to 2 per cent of the overall numbers, in line with Facebook’s demographics.

Playdom, based in Mountain View, California, is the fourth biggest social gaming company measured by audience and is well regarded for its technology. The developer has 38.4 million monthly active users — 600,000 in Australia — who play games such as Social City, Sorority Life, Market Street and Mobsters. This means Disney has paid about $US14.67 per user, implying a huge $US3.4 billion valuation for privately owned Zynga.

The price tag for Playdom, which also allows for an extra $US200m in performance incentives, shows a marked leap in the valuations for social gaming companies. Last November the Electronic Arts video games company paid just $US275 million for Playfish.

Inside Network’s Smith says the price, while higher than similar acquisitions, could prove to be a bargain. “It’s still early in the growth of social gaming,” the analyst says, adding that the industry was worth $US835m in revenuesthis year and he expects that to rise rapidly.

Steve Wadsworth, president of the Disney Interactive Media Group, points out that Disney is acquiring a company that has already established itself in the social gaming sector, along with talented staff and development capacity.

The real engine for growth could be Disney’s plans to lend its own brands and characters to future Playdom titles.

Disney brands range from the movie classics such as Snow White or Aladdin to Marvel comic characters such as the X-Men, as well as a range of sports brands via the ESPN network.

“We bring a very rich and deep set of portfolios of characters and intellectual property that have an affinity with a large audience,” Wadsworth says.

As start-ups, social game developers focused on creating original games but there are signs of change.

Sebastien de Halleux, a co-founder of Playfish and now vice-president of business development for EA Interactive, believes that branding is becoming critical in social gaming — though he hopes the EA portfolio is complementary to what Disney has in the pipeline.

EA is the biggest video-game developer with titles such as The Sims and FIFA Superstar, as well as the rights to Hasbro titles such as Scrabble.

A new initiative by Facebook could alleviate one of the biggest obstacles to the growth of social gaming revenues.

Currently only 1 to 5 per cent of players convert to paying customers and de Halleux says the high rate of abandoned transactions suggests the payment infrastructure could be at fault.

He says that Facebook’s user base is global — Indonesia and Turkey are among its biggest markets — and not all customers have access to credit cards and PayPal.

Another problem is trust given that in the past several rogue operators have run scams through Facebook applications.

Since May last year Facebook has been testing Facebook Credits, a virtual currency to be used on the site.

Each credit costs US10c to the consumer and the site recently added additional payment methods such as trading in store gift cards, buying game cards at a convenience store or trying offers from Facebook partners.

Developers keep 70 per cent of the revenue after Facebook’s cut but seem happy to accept the arrangement because the common currency could help the market grow.(source:the australian)


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