I don't mean it to sound like such a non-news piece, as the fact that Zynga has planned to make another couple of hundred million dollar transactions this year, but it is good news.
Why is it good news? Because it means that, much in the way it acquired DrawSomething creator, OMGPop after the huge amount of success it saw with that game, this was one of the first times recently that Zynga acquired a company with a great product instead of creating a shameless lookalike as a quick cash-in.
Case-in-point was a scandal late last year when Zynga made its own version of the indie success, Tiny Tower that blatantly lifted everything – from the graphics, to the gameplay, to tiny details like purchasing elevator upgrades. This incensed the games industry because it not only creates brand confusion, it could negatively effect the ongoing sales of smaller games.
At least if Zynga keeps acquiring smart little dev studios, it could put them in the position to be financial backers for newer, more ambitious projects to get off the ground.
Now, putting aside some of the other reasons Zynga has been criticized – most recently with the spat between OMGPop's CEO and the one team member left behind from the sale – making a claim that you're going to spend at least the same $180 million it put into the OMGPop purchase into a few more could be great news for smaller devs. That's a whole lot of capital to play with, even if the end result is less independant iOS games. For small studios struggling to make a profit on the iOS store, this could mean job security and proper marketing campaigns that only exist in the bigger publisher space.
JD
Original article: OMG, Zynga Planning “a Few” More Hundred Million-Dollar Acquisitions (AllThingsD)