Almost five months after Zynga’s initial release of FarmVille on the iPhone, the company has followed through on its promise to also release the game for the iPad.
Regular iPhone players won’t see much that’s different in the iPad version. The biggest step for Zynga was the creation of new graphics for the iPad’s larger screen, a significant time investment that probably explains the months-long wait.
In its press release, Zynga calls the iPhone version of FarmVille an “instant hit”. That’s a subjective measurement that some may not agree with. While FarmVille has appeared a 50 times among the top 25 free game downloads, according to Zynga, the free charts are somewhat less competitive than the paid, and FarmVille has rarely appeared at the very top of the list.
The game is for some stiff competition on the iPad, where Ngmoco’s We Farm, also a virtual goods-based farming game, is getting rave reviews. Facebook games typically haven’t done well on iDevices as native mobile games, mainly being used by Facebook players who want to stay connected to their virtual space.
But Zynga has an ace up its sleeve: earlier this month, it acquired Bonfire Studios, the company that actually developed We Farm. As we noted afterward, Zynga looks like it’s readying a mobile push for the near future, of which FarmVille could be a component.
Source: Inside Social Games
Friday, October 22, 2010