To Launch Google Games [UPDATED]
Google invested over a hundred million (somewhere around $100 – $200) in the San Fransisco based social network game developer, Zynga, Techcrunch confirmed yesterday. “We’ve confirmed from multiple sources,” they said.
Multiple sources reveal that the investment came from none other than Google itself, and not from its venture partners. With this highly strategic deal comes a tip, some sources say that Google is soon going to launch Google Games, which will be its Social Gaming platform.
Whether Google will bring up a social gaming site only or with social networks integrations too, is not known. Don’t forget Google.Me at this point. Furthermore we can’t rule out any chances that Google Checkout will be made the straight forward payment option (as against Paypal for Zynga).
Interesting enough, sources also predict that Zynga’s revenue turn for the year 2011 will be atleast 1 billion, as of now the revenue has been estimated at $350 million for the first half of 2010. With Zynga being a good push for people to log-in to facebook to play the game everyday, other big heads like Google, Yahoo and MSN cannot afford to keep themselves away from this social gaming ecosystem.
UPDATE: Google and Zynga declined to comment on this story. Also social gaming plans are very clear from their Product Management Job Opening (U.S.) found
here.
