Gareth Davis, a platform manager at Facebook charged with overseeing games, expects social gaming’s killer app to emerge in the near future.
Discussing where social gaming is headed in a preview of a keynote speech he’ll deliver at GDC later this month, Davis told Forbes:
“What we're about to see is the next level of social game play. The language of social gaming is being invented and we have a few of the building blocks, but many more are about to be discovered.
“There will be a killer app for social games in the same way that Mario was for Nintendo, Sonic was for Sega and Halo was for Xbox. We're going to have our Halo, our Mario, soon.”
Davis said that he expects this breakthrough title to be different to anything currently in the marketplace, including the massively popular FarmVille.
“I think FarmVille is a great game, but it is a light simulation that has mass appeal. I think that we will see a new kind of game that people have not really seen before. It may have a traditional IP on it, it doesn't have to be completely out of left field, but we're expecting those great experiences to show up.”
Davis also noted that Facebook currently commands 400 million monthly active users, and serves 100 million unique game players on a monthly basis.
With the likes of EA’s Madden and Take-Two’s Civilization franchises heading to Facebook, he predicted: “This year you'll be seeing some more major Triple-A brands - console and PC brands - come to Facebook.com. “