Most of Zynga's Money Is Now Coming From Mobile

Words With Friends and FarmVille creator Zynga said today that its mobile reinvention is making progress, with more than half of the company’s revenue coming from mobile devices.

The company missed Wall Street’s expectations for sales in the fourth quarter, turning in $182 million versus an expected $201 million. Earnings per share were nil, as expected by the Street, with a net loss of $2.4 million in the holiday quarter. Zynga shares were trading down about 11 percent after hours.

In the first quarter of 2015, Zynga expects sales to come in between $155 million and $165 million, far below analysts’ most recent estimate of $200 million. Between January and March, the company expects to lose between $52 million and $60 million, resulting in a net loss per share of six to seven cents.

An underperforming studio in Beijing, Zynga China, is set to close by the end of June, resulting in the loss of about 71 jobs, according to a company filing.

Zynga said that in 2015, it would continue its push into mobile, which represented 60 percent of total sales in 2014, up from 27 percent in mid-2013, when Don Mattrick replaced Mark Pincus as CEO. The company hopes to push that percentage to 75 percent this year, and said that all of the six to 10 new games it plans to launch will be “mobile-first.”

On top of last year’s new slot machine and football games, Hit It Rich and NFL Showdown, the company said it would enter two new categories this year: Match-three and action-strategy.

In less jargony terms: Zynga wants to compete directly with Supercell, Machine Zone and King. Those three companies currently dominate the app stores’ top-grossing charts in many countries with blockbuster games like Clash of Clans (action-strategy), Game of War: Fire Age (same) and Candy Crush Saga (match-three).

The new match-three game will be called FarmVille: Harvest Swap; King’s farming-based match-three game, Farm Heroes Saga, is the 10th-highest grossing iPhone game in the U.S. The action-strategy game, Empires and Allies, is being developed by FarmVille creator Mark Skaggs.

Another action-strategy game, made by Clumsy Ninja and CSR Racing developer Natural Motion, is also in the pipeline for 2015. The game, Dawn of Titans, was already in development before Zynga bought Natural Motion last year for $527 million.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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