Zynga Acquires November Software

Beleaguered social and mobile games maker Zynga announced today that it has acquired November Software. With less-than-stellar quarterly reports and the recent reveal that it would be laying off a large number of workers, you might be wondering why Zynga is spending the money to acquire other companies. As it turns out, Zynga actually bought November back in the spring, but is only revealing the buyout today.

This acquisition is another step in Zynga's transition to focus on mid-core gamers – players who have decent machines as opposed to high-end machines or low-end computers that can only run social and indie games. Mid-core gamers tend to stick with games longer, which means that Zynga could potentially make more money than it can from the social and mobile crowd. It sounds like a good idea, and the team at November is already hard at work on a new game under Zynga's watch.

That game is called Battlestone, but other than that, the details are pretty slim. We'll have to wait until the game is further along in development to find out more, but if Battlestone works out, we might see Zynga begin to climb out of this rut it's worked itself into. Zynga's player base has slowly been abandoning the company's social titles as they graduate to mobile games, which has left Zynga is something of a sticky situation.

We'll see if it works soon enough, but one thing is for sure: Zynga needs to change up its strategy or it risks losing everything. The switch the mid-core gaming might just be the thing that saves Zynga in the long run. What do you think? Will the mid-core gaming crowd bring Zynga back from the brink?

[via TechCrunch]