CityVille beats FarmVille's best numbers, shatters and sets records

CityVille is huge
It looks like Zynga and the CityVille team have received a New Year's gift now, too. (In fact, CityVille doesn't seem to need an occasion anymore.) TechCrunch reports that CityVille has become the biggest social game to ever grace Facebook, breaking FarmVille's record-setting peak of nearly 83.8 million monthly players in March 2010 with 84.2 million monthly players. Zynga's most recent social-gaming juggernaut has been shattering records since it launched early in Dec. 2010, but this is a first for both CityVille and the Facebook game genre altogether.

We've all said that the growth has to plateau at some point, but continues surging upward, blowing away our expectations and doubts without much more than a few stutters, according to a chart provided by Inside Social Games (ISG). It's ISG that also predicts CityVille to reach 125 million players at some point in 2011. Well, if the game keeps soaring at this rate of almost two million new monthly players daily, it's only a matter of time before CityVille at least reaches 100 million. Either way, CityVille is already the most popular social game to date in the genre's infantile lifespan. That is until Zynga launches something else, of course.

MySpace game developers shutter games amidst plummeting traffic

Byespace?
Let's not beat around the bush here: MySpace is hurtin'. Overall traffic is down, while the company lays off unfortunate employees and considers a sale, according to Inside Social Games. As a result, games are doing so hot on MySpace--at least when compared to the Facebook. That said, developers like Playdom, RockYou and Zynga have shut down many of their MySpace offerings in favor of focusing their full attention on Facebook and mobile.

ISG reports that Playdom, one of the most dominant MySpace developers, has shuttered Overdrive and Bloodlines, two text-based role-playing games. The company will still run Mobsters, Sorority Life and World Series of Poker, but who knows for how long is MySpace keeps sinking. RockYou, the folks behind games like Gourmet Ranch, has essentially boarded up shop on MySpace in closing RockYou Pets, Speed Racing and a few more social applications.

Oddly enough, Zynga hasn't completely given up on Tom yet. According to Inside Social Games, it seems as if Zynga has only shut down Street Racing on MySpace (and Facebook), a role-playing game. At the moment, the company still dominates the MySpace Top 25 with seven games: Mafia Wars, YoVille, Zynga Poker, Vampires, Fashion Wars, Special Forces, and Friend Factory. How long these games will be around is entirely up to Zynga, but gaging the MySpace situation overall doesn't bode well for games on the platform.