Given their scruples, or apparent lack thereof, it's hard to take any Zynga staffer seriously anytime a mish mosh of words resembling a phrase comes tumbling out of their mouths.
So when Steve Chiang, Zynga's president of games, claims to Games Industry that "the tablet's becoming almost the ultimate game platform," it's a difficult thing to take him seriously. Zynga made their mark on the industry with Farmville and all its attendant spam.
Sure, tablets are a great thing, with all the sexy appeal of a gadget, coupled with portability, and a significantly larger screen than any other gaming handheld, but the "ultimate gaming platform?" Au contraire, monsieur. Tablet games are great but their appeal is highly limited. As such, you're not going to see any of gaming's larger developers doing anything for tablets but smaller ports of their already established franchises, if that.
Tablets have a tendency of offering a lot of freemium titles, that not only irritate gamers, but tend not offer the same kind of financial return that major developers are looking for. Despite this, there's still an audience for Zynga's games, and the company is ready to step in and provide games for them, whom they've labeled as "midcore."
Chiang says, "The reason why we call it midcore is there's a hardcore gaming audience, and that's not really our target. We don't want a small number of players. We're trying to capture all the depth and the visuals and the mechanics of a more core game, but make it simpler to play in shorter sessions."
But with Zynga marketing games towards this audience alone, and plans to continue ignoring consoles, there's no way the company will thrive with just a tablet market. But I'm biased.
