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Comment by Lewisham | Hacker News Reader

This is bonkers, because Activision Blizzard alone are making money hand over fist with WoW. There's no way that Zynga is worth that much.

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The market for casual games is potentially much, much larger than the market for games like WoW. WoW targets college students and young adults who identify as gamers. Farmville targets middle-aged housewives. There are many more of the latter than the former, and they control many more dollars in spending decisions.

still WoW alone rakes in more money than Zyngas complete Revenue in 2010. Top AAA games generate more than 1 Billion in revenue (GTA Series for example).

Dont undererstimate the gaming market.

I'm not, but I'm also not underestimating the casual gaming market. To me it seems like a classic disruptive innovation: leverage a new technology to serve the low end of the market better, vastly expanding it, and then slowly ramp up quality until you've eaten the whole market.

Stocks tend to be valued based on future earnings more than present earnings - after all, if you know that a company will be making more money next year, it's rational to buy their underpriced stock today and wait for it to appreciate.

What you have to remember is that top AAA games take 3+ years to develop, whereas top zenga games take 6 months and generate just as much revenue. The risk factor is far, far lower for zenga, and that makes great financial sense :)

Sure, but Zynga also needs a couple of games to reach the revenue of a Top selling AAA+ title. Of course its more risk per title but what i am just saying is that there is also alot of money to be made with the classic gamers.

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