Browser/Social Gaming: Not A Sure Fire Bet Afterall
It’s not exactly a secret. The world of social and browser-based gaming is a huge market, with an estimated worth of $60 billion by 2017, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why every company in the industry is trying to take a slice of this lucrative pie. However, the industry is not as easily infiltrated as it once was.
Recent reports from around the internet have shown that even the bigger companies are being forced to reevaluate their business strategy. The Facebook giant Zynga recently announced that they will be closing 10+ of their older social based gaming titles which include staff layoffs in the hundreds. Following that announcement was information from Ubisoft, confirming the cancellation of their Facebook title based on the hugely popular Tom Clancy franchise, Ghost Recon: Commander. Nobody can accuse the likes of Zynga and Ubisoft for going into projects halfheartedly as both boast a long line of successful titles, but it does go to show that even the bigger names cannot guarantee success.
And more recently it has emerged that the the quirky browser MMORPG game Glitch will also be closing its doors after just recently celebrating its first birthday.
Although this doesn’t exactly spell out doom for the industry, it’s almost a good thing to see. For too long have developers been allowed to push out sub-par games, purely because peoples expectations are lower when they read “browser-based”. Maybe if this part of the industry starts becoming as open to critic as the other areas of the gaming industry, we may actually see some developers starting to raise the bar.
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