WTF: How long before Zynga becomes the most valuable video game company?

If the online game market that Zynga dominates continues to grow this shouldn't be surprising. EA and Activision are just not maneuverable enough to carve out the share that their IP and experience could potentially open to them. Chances are that they'll belatedly launch a few titles (or try and buy a few studios to do it for them) and screw it up by not getting the changed environment.

But it's a WTF moment to be sure, that shows how much things are changing.

I'm also intrigued by the fact that Tencent has a market cap of USD $46 billion (it's on the HKSE). Ten cent is a internet portal but it's stock jumped after online games sales surged (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...)

While I"m not a fan of their data collection, I have to admire zynga. They've managed to build and execute a solid recipe for games. (Notice they haven't experimented with new core game concepts). This is an excellent strategy, there's a HUGE backlog of game ideas from the 90's to steal from without taking real innovation risk. As a business, I love it. As an artist, It's derivative and boring.

Which is the problem with EA also. They found a recipe that works (create sports game x, create x+1, x+2, create franchise movie game and have gotten so entrenched in it and the surrounding market chain that they can't change. This is a risk for zynga in a few years time. But in the meantime they should milk it for all it's worth.

Personally though, I'll be playing sim city rather than cityville,