Draw Something edges out Angry Birds paid app on iOS

Krystal Peak · April 5, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/25af

Zynga watches its newest acquisition dominate the App Store less than two months since its debut

 

One of newest member of the Zynga family is showing its pulling power by knocking Rovio's newest game Angry Birds Space off of the top of the App Store paid section.

For the last two weeks, Angry Birds Space has dominated the App Store's paid application list and has acquired more than 18,700 ratings with an average of 4.5 stars, while the 2 month old paid Draw Something app has accumulated more than 99,000 ratings to gain a 5 star average and has experienced more than 50 million downloads. Not bad the small social drawing application that came out of nowhere.

This top spot may be a small sign of redemption after many called Zynga hasty to acquire OMGPOP for $180 million on the same day Rovio launched Angry Birds Space.

The simplicity and success of Draw Something has surprised many and made more people reconsider what is needed to create a profitable game. Draw Something challenges players to use their finger to draw a picture of an object (the game offers you three choices, such as a "banana," "a tugboat," or a "sneeze.")

Once the player draws the picture, their friend must guess what the object is -- much like "Pictionary."

While there are free and paid versions of the game, the company also has Zynga'esque freemium options where players can purchase color pallets, more word options and tools that help reveal some of the letters in the answer. 

Zynga revealed that since the game launched, more than six billion drawings have been created and, that at the game’s peak hours, it generates 3,000 drawings per second -- totally more than 6 billion drawings since inception. The mobile game also comes up as the most popular game on Facebook since the Facebook connection option makes it easy to find all your friends that you can play games with.

Zynga says that most popular words are “starfish,” “pregnant,” “six-pack,” “hangman” and “boom box.” And the least popular word thus far has been “latrine.”

AppData shows that the game has more than 14 million daily active users. The next most popular game, also owned by Zynga, is Words With Friends, which draws about eight million daily users.

In the past six months, Zynga has released 15 games and is continuing to build out its Zynga.com platform so that people can go directly to Zynga for their gaming.

Other than Draw Something, Zynga continues to flex its muscle to snap up games that it wants is its pantheon. In December 2010, it acquired the Texas-based mobile game developer Newtoy, developers of Words with Friends, for $53.3 million. 

Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) was trading near $12 on Thursday morning, that's down around 2% for the close Wednesday evening. 

 

 

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Zynga is the largest social gaming company with 8.5 million daily users and 45 million monthly users.  Zynga’s games are available on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Yahoo! and the iPhone, and include Texas Hold’Em Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Vampires, Street Racing, Scramble and Word Twist.  The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.  Zynga is headquartered at the Chip Factory in San Francisco.  For more information, please visit www.zynga.com.

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