Zynga have been ‘threatening’ it for a while now and have finally gone ahead and done it. They have launched their own real money online casino. This is really not impressive at all because there are a dime a dozen online casinos and poker sites out there so the real interesting questions are:
1. Will Zynga be able to convert that facebook traffic to its online casino and online poker site?
2. What innovative features are they bringing to online poker and online casino gambling that hasn’t already been done?
Currently Zynga Plus Casino and Zynga Plus Poker are live in the UK. Online gambling in the UK is FIERCE so it will be interesting to see their end of quarter stock results when they are published.
Zyngas popularity grew off the social aspect of games like farmville but unlike farmville the online casino games currently available at their gambling sites feature no social element at all. Its quite strange that a company would launch their product without the feature that makes it most distinctive from its competitors. Maybe it was too soon to come out with a Casino product? So far besides the Farmville slot, we are noticing a lot of the common IGT Software licensed games such as Cleopatra, Rubiks and Monopoly.
Zyngas online casino is powered by bwin.party’s PartyCasino Software and is offering 160 games .
Zynga went into a partnership with bwin.party last year in preparation for its launch into online gambling. This means that the large selection of games will be PartyCasino games and maybe a few exclusive Zynga titles like Farmville.
It will be interesting to see how Zynga will ‘change the game’ in the online casino games arena. Gaming Innovation will be key to its online casino being successful.
On the Poker side though, Zynga is likely to hit the ground running because poker is poker. Zynga Plus Poker will run on the bwin.party’s open player pool which comprises players from PartyPoker, bwin, Gamebookers, B2B and WPT.
With over 40 million Texas Hold ‘Em free money poker players, Zyngas real test once again will be how many of these players can be converted into real money players.
We’re going to keep watch and keep you updated.
About Zynga
Zynga is a Social Gaming company formed in 2007 and is listed on the NASDAQ currently trading at $3.07 a share. News of the online casino and poker site launches sent the share price up by 5%.
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