Zynga continues its move into mobile with new Farmville game

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.