Zynga
announced today that it will launch a mobile version of
Farmville alongside major updates to two of its flagship mobile franchises in the coming weeks, making good on
stockholder assurances it made back in January to "address the mobile market."
The games --
Farmville 2: Country Escape,
New Words With Friends and
New Zynga Poker -- will be rolled out across "select markets" in the coming weeks, and Zynga claims all will be available worldwide by the end of the second quarter of 2014.
These games were all developed by Zynga's internal teams and not NaturalMotion, the
Clumsy Ninja developer Zynga
acquired in January for an estimated $527 million.
The mobile version of
Farmville is interesting because it will permit players to play offline and in short bursts -- requiring players to wait as little as ten seconds for select crops to grow -- according to
interviews with Zynga personnel conducted by Re/code.
The updated mobile versions of
Words With Friends and
Zynga Poker will sport new features and interfaces, but their core gameplay will remain unchanged.
