Zynga continues to seriously struggle, as the company announced Thursday prelimiary results for the third financial quarter and lowered expectations in general for the rest of the calendar year, signaling tough times ahead for the social gaming company. CEO Mark Pincus explained that both subpar results on existing games and delays in upcoming products have hit the company hard, and they’re having to underwrite losses taken on the acquisition of OMGPOP.
“The third quarter of 2012 continued to be challenging and, while many of our games performed to plan, as a whole we did not execute to our satisfaction,” Pincus was quoted in the official press release. The company now expects to report a net loss of between $ 90 million and $ 105 million, they noted in the release, which includes an estimated impairment charge of about $ 85 million related to the purchase of OMGPOP.
Pincus wrote that “While we’re disappointed with these financial results,” Zynga is looking to further expand into more gambling ventures and mobile games to make up for losses. The March acquisition of OMGPOP for $ 178.5 million, plus another $ 30 million for employee retention, now looks particularly ill-fated.
Pincus explained why the company has struggled in particular:
There are a few factors contributing to a weaker than expected outlook for Q4. The reduced performance of some of our live web games is continuing to impact results and we have several new games which are at risk of launching later than expected.
