Social gaming firm Zynga has posted weaker-than-expected quarterly financial figures and cut its full-year forecasts after revealing that it had delayed the release of several games.
The company said that its number of active monthly players dropped year-on-year from 187 million to 130 million.
Zynga now expects deferred revenue for 2014 of about $695 million to $725 million – lower than previous forecasts of between $770 million and $810 million.
The firm’s share price plummeted by nine per cent in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq exchange.
Anticipated launches of an updated version of Zynga Poker and other games such as Words with Friends, as well as mobile games from the Natural Motion studio it acquired in January, have been delayed.
Zynga chief executive officer Don Mattrick told the Reuters news agency that the company had “decided that the best choice for the medium and the long term was to move that revenue effectively from 2014 to 2015” after analysing the firm’s product pipeline.
“Moving revenue is on one hand is clearly discouraging… but we are being consistent against our lens of medium- to long-term choices for the benefit of customers and shareholders,” he said.
“The majority of benefit is going to come in 2015.”
However, Zynga confirmed that it has agreed a licensing deal with American football’s NFL to release a new mobile game called NFL Showdown in certain countries.
The company has also struck an agreement with Tiger Woods to release a new mobile game based on the golfer.
source : www.igamingbusiness.com
