Facebook games giant says its future is platform-agnostic

Zynga: Smartphone fragmentation curse will end

The thriving mobile games market could soon see the end of smartphone fragmentation, a key executive at Zynga’s has claimed.

David Ko said his company – which has soared from the Facebook games phenomenon – sees mobile as “a new social gaming frontier".

"The market is very fragmented today, with iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone… It’s a fragmented industry, and we’re trying to figure out what the best experience is for these devices," Ko told The Guardian.

The factionalised smartphone market forces developers to build touch-screen games for several different operating systems if they wish to broaden their target market.

Ko offered no explanation on how this technology issue would be resolved, but appeared confident a solution is around the corner.

“We’ve always said we want Zynga to be the best content creators in the world, and we are platform agnostic,” he said,

“More and more of our players are not just accessing their favourite games from their PC, but from their mobile devices: they want the experience on their mobiles and tablets, and we want to deliver that.

"Our job is to tailor the experience for those people, and while you may see a more fragmented experience on mobile today, I do believe over time you’ll see a consolidation of that experience.”

Zynga already allows PC-bound customers to interact with iPhone users through Words With Friends – a low-spec Scrabble game that syncs each player’s move through the internet.

Ko also said Zynga is "very bullish" on tablet software development. He claimed the company is also looking at incorporating various smartphone technologies – such as cameras and accelerometers – into future games.

The key, he said, was that the use of these additions would elementally be fun.

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