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Glu Mobile looks to casual freemium, announcing Boo Town and Toy Village

Plus racing and zombies for the boys

Glu Mobile looks to casual freemium, announcing Boo Town and Toy Village
The share price of Gu Mobile (NASDAQ:GLUU) may have dropped almost 50 percent in the past couple of months, but that doesn't stop some people thinking Zynga should buy it for a whopping $600 million.

To get that sort of valuation, however, the company will have to prove it can build out its freemium catalog from male-oriented games such as current successes Contract Killer and Gun Bros.

That balance was something mentioned by CEO Niccolo De Masi when we last spoke.

"Glu hasn't crushed it in the casual space in the same way we have with action-adventure," he said

"Half of the top grossing games on the App Store are resource management, so we can only grow to a certain size without having some substantial properties in that category."

Target group

That's the thinking behind two of the company's newly announced games - Boo Town and Toy Village.

Both are Ville-style games that have you building houses and shops, and harvesting crops to attract friendly ghosts and please the toys of your youth, respectively.

Of course, Glu is also maintaining its core audience with Contract Killer: Zombies, which builds on the previous shooter game, although enabling a more free roaming experience as you rescue civilians.

Rogue Racing is a customisation car game that gets you tuning your roadsters and racing against others in the multiplayer Challenge mode.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.