It’s no secret that Zynga is making a big bet on mobile, recently acquiring mobile app developer Newtoy, and launching native Farmville apps for the iPad and iPhone. In fact, as of earlier this month, Farmville for the iPhone had seen 7 million downloads with 10 million people per month accesing Zynga on a mobile device. Today, Zynga is debuting its first game designed for the mobile web: Mafia Wars Atlantic City.
According to the company, the game was built in HTML5 and has been designed specifically to be used on a browser-based smart phone or device including the iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry and WebOS devices. Mafia Wars Atlantic City is available by pointing your mobile web browser to M.MafiaWars.com or at GetJar.
Zynga’s bet on HTML5 (versus Flash) is also worth noting as well, which allows the games to be played on iPads and iPhones. The gaming giant recently bought Dextrose AG, which developed an HTML5-based development engine.
Zynga, which brought on former Yahoo exec David Ko as its SVP of Mobile, also recently announced Zynga Poker will be coming to Android phones this week. And Mafia Wars debuted a significant music partnership with rap artist Dr.Dre last week.
As Ko told TechCrunch’s MG Siegler at LeWeb a few weeks ago, Mobile is a huge opportunity for us. We have a huge user base to leverage, and they have some really exciting IP. Stay tuned.