The challenge that the perception is not the case. There are a lot of games made with Unity that fit that characteristics. It’s subjective, but that’s really what it means. AAA really means that the game is critically acclaimed AND makes lots of money. Unity is not perceived as having many AAA-products. The company is the leader in the engine market, but there is no AAА console project with it. That probably the one area of the friction but we are addressing that. But we recognize that and we change that.
And that may be one of the areas where Unity has started to have some stress in the last six month. To give you a bit more of that – when you got that complicated ecosystem, one of the challenges that you might have is how do you maintain the quality across so many things you do. It’s a complicated world, but we see it as opportunities, not challenges. And it’s global now, not just in one area. There’re VR and AR, and Unity itself has 25 platforms and counting, and we have 1,5 mln active developers a month. And we got more than ever these new technologies that can enhance the creativity. There are more platforms for developers to make games on. And the opportunities are around more than ever. We don’t really have challenges – we have opportunities. Along with personalized apps, he’s looking for experiences that make people feel alive and enhanced when they feel connected.What are the main challenges Unity faces with today? The session ended with Downie stressing the importance of shared experiences, that we don’t exist in a vacuum. “Companies who unlock that will get the players who are into consequential gaming,” he said. He sees opportunities in markets with categories that address basic human needs as well as driving experiences that go beyond just racing games.ĭownie acknowledged that any successful company has to be aware of the many slices of someone’s time - who you participate with, when you play, and how you play. The sheer scale is just an amazing opportunity for company,” he said And it’s not just traditional gaming experiences.
“There’s a lot more consumers participating. He also noted that it was great to discover that Natural Motion had many great projects that Zynga didn’t even know about until after acquiring the development house.Īs a veteran of the mobile market, Downie was asked how his view of the sector’s evolution. He noted that CSR Racing could have been a bigger success if not for the fact that the game had an ending. He cites the console-quality appeal of games such as CSR Racing as well as Clumsy Ninja. He noted that this company was attractive for having creative risk-takers with best-in-class technology. The company has also seen a significant shift toward products being mobile-first, a huge change over the Zynga of 2009.ĭownie was giddy when talking about Zynga’s acquistion of U.K.-based Natural Motion. It’s a portfolio that 2,000 employees support. When asked how the product pipeline has changed since Don Mattrick joined Zynga as its CEO, Downie spoke generally about having purposeful strategies for a scaled portfolio.
Regarding the success of Farmville 2: Country Escape, Downie credits having smaller teams for mobile game production cycles and using the versatile Unity codebase, along with having the ambition to release the game in 16 languages on both iOS and Android on the same day. Often putting himself in the consumers’ shoes, he asks what can Zynga’s games and apps make to be worthy of someone’s valuable time?
All the while, he’s cognizant of the amount of seconds a human has in a day and knows that time is valuable.
Downie was especially proud of Zynga’s partnership with the NFL and the success of NFL Showdown, and he also talked about how pro golfer Tiger Woods would be the next Zynga licensed sports brand. You could not have pictured the company in 2009 taking on as many licensed properties has they have today. Zynga’s portfolio has never been more diverse, even if it still has the seven year-old Zynga Poker.