FarmVille-maker Zynga takes aim at 'dude' games next [Rumor]

Anonymous sources have reached out to Inside Social Games, indicating that Zynga might be looking to buy a few smaller core gaming developers. What is core gaming? Shooters, action role-players, racing games -- games that generally appeal to males, ages 13 and up. Think Halo, Gears of War and Call of Duty. While core games do not have the same number of players as social games, Zynga may have reached a saturation point, and the studio is looking for new styles of games to attract new players. Does this mean we might soon see a ShooterVille or a real, persistent version of FarmVille?

All of this talk is based on rumors from anonymous sources, but it isn't hard to imagine Zynga branching out of the social market, at least in more limited ways at first. While Facebook gamers still make up the vast majority of Zynga's customers, is it possible that the game maker is trying to increase the number of visitors to its newly launched Zynga.com? Or is this just a case of a large company trying to learn about different genres from smaller companies that know better? Time will tell.

Zynga may be looking to core games for growth [Inside Social Games] >