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One US analyst has warned that Zynga will have to start attracting a high number of new users to offset the declines suffered by its titles and justify its newfound share price.
The publisher’s most recent releases Scramble With Friends and Hidden Chronicles have failed to replicate the successes of previous titles.
For instance, Gamasutra reports that Hidden Chronicles attracted 710,000 daily active users (DAU) in its first 12 days. By comparison, CastleVille attracted over 5m DAUs in its first 12 days in 2012.
Following Zynga’s floatation in December shares climbed from their initial 9.50 to 9.75 in 11 days. However, by January 9th its share value had fallen to just 8.00. Having climbed back to 9.31 by January 17th Zynga is today down3.44 per cent at 8.9.
Of course, Zynga’s titles could yet gain further popularity, but as Cowen & Company’s Doug Creutz points out, "that has not been the general pattern for Zynga’s launches over the past year".
"The quarterly rate of DAU decline for Zynga’s titles that are at least three months old has averaged 18.4 per cent per quarter for the last two years," he added.
Assuming Zynga averages a 20 per cent quarterly rate of decline for titles beyond their launch windows in 2012, the company must add 9-10m DAUs per quarter from new games just to keep total DAUs constant."
