Xbox Live is ‘too small’ for social games

Social/casual games publisher Zynga says consoles do not have a big enough audience to warrant their games being released on them.
Hardly one to shy away from making bold statements, Zynga (who last week claimed that 40 year-old women were the new hardcore gamers) that said that the consoles audience is too small for their games – which include FramVille, MafiaWars and CityVille.
Zynga’s chief game designer, Brian Reynolds says that consoles lack that same magic provided by social networking sites.
“The thing that seems to make social gaming and networking magical is the fact that all my friends are potentially there and they might see the things that I’m posting or doing or expressing.

“[Xbox Live’s] too small a demographic… 20 or maybe even 30 percent of my friends might have an Xbox 360, but effectively 100 percent of them have Facebook and effectively 100 percent of them have a mobile phone. Of them, probably 90 percent have a smartphone,” said Reynolds when speaking to IndustryGamers.
He continued that “if we made a game on Xbox Live… the number of anyone’s friends that’s going to be able to participate in the social experience is going to be a very small number so the amount of social capital that there is isn’t going to be very high.

“That’s why right now we’re on Facebook for sure, and mobile is the obvious next place for us to go because it is an inherently social platform. I mean, we’ve got to be on several different kinds of platforms, but especially if we can figure out a way to have people socialise cross-platform.”