If you’ve been itching to play sports games developed by social gaming giant Zynga, they may actually be closer to launch than you think.
In the past 12 months, the company has made moves indicating social sports games may be under development, like the hiring of EA Sports Creative Director Mark Turmell, who was also the lead designer of NFL Blitz (picture above) while he was at Midway.
Zynga’s latest move: acquiring the domain name ZyngaSports.com.
I did a little domain sleuthing today and found that the domain ZyngaSports.com (Whois) was transferred this week to the intellectual property law firm, Keats McFarland & Wilson, who of course acts as Zynga’s attorneys in IP matters such as that of the Blingville dispute.
So which sports game will be first out of the gate?
It’s anyone’s guess, but if I had to pick it would be Zynga Football.
And yes, Zynga owns ZyngaFootball.com, ZyngaFootball.net, and even ZyngaFootball.org.
It acquired those web addresses in April 2010 with the help of internet brand protection company MarkMonitor, along with over 500 domains based on existing and possibly future games.
The names which were transferred over a two day span in April, are too many to list here in this post, but included domains like animalvillegame.com, bountyville.com, casinoblitzgame.com, coasterville.net, crimevillegame.com, friendempires.com, hotelvillegame.com, ranchville.info, zyngadopewars.com, zyngadragonwars.com, zyngaglamourlife.com, and of course, zyngafootball.com.
While the imminent launch of Zynga Sports is purely speculation, it looks like a very good possibility.
Though not an exhaustive list, you can see hundreds of the domains Zynga acquired in April 2010 here.
Discussion: Kotaku, Games.com, Gawker, All Facebook and Gamezebo