Zynga Rolls Out CityVille On Facebook

Farmville maker Zynga launched a new urban game CityVille, which will be available on Facebook.

CityVille is a new social game allowing anyone anywhere to build their dream city from the ground up. Available in beta in the coming weeks, CityVille is debuting in five languages, marking the first international game launch for Zynga.

The new game allows players to build a city, interact with friends' cities and build franchises with the help of their friends. Players can start businesses in their friends' cities, after getting their permission, and trade goods through that business.

As the city leader, the player must guide the city to become a thriving metropolis with the help of city advisor.

CityVille, which follows on the heels of the widely-successful launch of FrontierVille that currently has 28 million monthly users, will be available in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish on Facebook at CityVille.com. CityVille also features Zynga's first 3D-rendered buildings and characters.

CityVille is where Monopoly meets Main Street, said Sean Kelly, general manager of CityVille. We are thrilled to bring the world our most social game to date -- building on the best-of-breed gameplay that Zynga fine-tuned with FarmVille and FrontierVille. Instead of harvesting crops you're harvesting your neighborhood, instead of clearing your friend's frontier you're working on a friend's franchise.

Facebook catapulted Zynga to success as people on Facebook recruited friends to join them in online play and shared game developments on the world's largest social networking site.

Zynga, whose games are also available on MySpace, the iPad and the iPhone, is the world's largest social game developer with more than 225 million monthly active users playing their games. Zynga's games include FarmVille, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker and FishVille. Zynga's Farmville has more than 80 million users.

Zynga, which is reportedly worth more than $5 billion only three years after it was founded, is said to be generating revenue between $500 million and $700 million a year and many analysts expect the company to pursue an initial public offering as early as next year.