EA touts Playfish growth amidst tumbling Facebook gaming numbers

It hasn't exactly been a great few months for social games of late, with a change in Facebook's notification policy leading almost directly to some pretty drastic reductions in player numbers for many popular games. But Playfish owner Electronic Arts says the general downturn hasn't really hurt its newest $300 million social gaming acquisition.

"We've been very pleased with the PlayFish acquisition," EA Interactive's Barry Cottle said in a recent investor briefing (as reported by Gamasutra). "PlayFish is right now the number two player in the marketplace and the only one that's been growing in the past four months."

Indeed, Cottle said that Playfish has grown by five percent since last year's acquisition, partly on the strength of new games like Fifa Superstars and My Empire. So even though numbers across EA's Facebook games have been relatively flat over the past month, things are still looking up for social games as far as EA is (publicly) concerned.