Audio's Golden Ear-a: Zynga launches "games for your ears" on Google Nest
Hey Google, hit me with a Word Clue... Zynga is the social gaming legend behind mobile hits like FarmVille and Words With Friends. Now, instead of seeing Zynga's blindingly colorful games, you'll be able to play them with your ears: Zynga's launching audio gaming on Google Nest Hub and other Google Assistant devices. It's starting with a free, voice-based puzzle game called Daily Word Wheel (Zynga's obsessed with words).
Audio's "Golden Ear-a"... Radio and phone calls might be semi-dead, but audio definitely isn’t. We spend so much time staring at screens (especially in the WFH era) that audio-based entertainment is experiencing a major renaissance.
- Spotify has spent more than $800M over the past two years on podcast-related acquisitions, as pod-pularity continues to skyrocket.
- Apple is projected to sell ~$15B worth of AirPods in 2020, more than 2X what it sold in 2019 — and almost 9X Snap's total 2019 sales.
- Clubhouse, the controversial audio-based social app, notched a $100M valuation with just 1.5K users.
- Twitter launched voice tweets and is testing "Audio Spaces."
Meet your non-users where they are... Zynga's betting it can lure in non-gamers by creatively meeting them where they are (and where the competition isn't): smart speakers. Roughly one in four American adults owns a smart speaker, and 62% use a voice-operated assistant. Zynga's hoping to leverage Google's ~68M Nests and Nest Hubs to hook people with its games while they're doing the dishes and cooking. In time, these casual audio gamers could become mobile gamers, too.