There is often a tide that moves with the rhythm of the gaming world. Sometimes it will come and make a huge splash while other times those waves will crash and roll back, pulling almost everyone else with it. People saw a wave in 82 with the subsequent game crash of Atari and it looks like that wave may be coming for social gaming.

It seems that the top 3 publishers on Facebook have experienced a sharp decline in December. While some analysts are blaming Christmas and New Years the decline was not present this time last year. The three publishers in question, Zynga, EA Games and Playdom have all had recorded declines according to analyst firm Cowen and Company. The Farmville audience dropped possibly due to the new Castleville which is currently expected to decline after a recent peak. The daily active users were down 608,000 players to 47 million.

Right, so 47 million is a bad number in the social gaming world. Of course, this is when you have a player possibility of almost half a billion people worldwide and games that would only take up more than a few hours in your day.  But still, a loss is a loss.  Meanwhile, EA, who are kinda new to this whole venture saw a drop of 1.2 million to 10.9 million over the month. And over at Disney's Playdom, things aren't so cheery with only 3.1 million users on their games. The company's social scene has been criticised by investors for not having that many games or releasing them fast enough for their social networking platform.

Via [GamesIndustry.Biz]

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