{"id":5276,"date":"2012-07-29T21:53:17","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T02:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2012-07-30T01:01:46","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T06:01:46","slug":"zyngas-weak-earnings-show-social-gamings-diminishing-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=5276","title":{"rendered":"Zynga\u2019s weak earnings show social gaming\u2019s diminishing returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zynga’s stock fell roughly 40 percent, to a price of just over $3, after the company posted per-share earnings of just a penny, well below analysts expectations of 6 cents a share. The stock is down almost 80 percent from a high of $14.69 back in March, and market analysts have severely scaled back their guidance on the company. \u201cWe were wrong about the current state of Zynga\u2019s business,\u201d Morgan Stanley’s Scott Devitt said flatly in an analyst note. \u201cSomething smells in FarmVille,” wrote Evercore analyst Ken Sena, who thinks the stock will continue to fall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

via Zynga\u2019s weak earnings show social gaming\u2019s diminishing returns | Ars Technica<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What’s really troubling for Zynga, though, is that each new release seems to be seeing further diminishing returns, with smaller user peaks and quicker drop-offs. While CityVille<\/em> managed to attract over 100 million users at its peak in early 2011, CastleVille<\/em> peaked at just over 50 million monthly users after launching last November, and is already back down to 16.7 million players (The Ville<\/em>, which launched earlier this month, is still in the “quick growth” phase of the pattern). This isn’t that surprising, since with each new wave of what’s essentially the same game, more players are likely to be overly familiar with the basic concepts already, and get bored that much quicker.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zynga’s stock fell roughly 40 percent, to a price of just over $3, after the company posted per-share earnings of just a penny, well below analysts expectations of 6 cents a share. The stock is down almost 80 percent from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[604,661,247],"class_list":["post-5276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-endups","tag-gaming","tag-social-networking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5287,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/5287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}