Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has discussed Facebook, mobile, and his plans to make the company more like Xbox Live in an on-stage interview at AllThingD's D10 conference.

"On the web," he explained, Facebook "has been really important for a lot of companies with distribution. Right now, we all have a need for a Facebook on mobile. Mobile is an explosive opportunity, but it’s still really fragmented."

"Discovery and the return path to apps still need innovation on mobile," Pincus argued. "I think mobile usage can grow a lot faster, but the revenue will take longer."

Zynga Live

As for the company's own platform, Zynga.com, Pincus unsurprisingly thinks it's pretty good.

"We think we’ve built the best hosting for social games and deep analytics. You can make your network available to companies through APIs, and we are in the early stages of doing that."

But all that is only the beginning. "We would be more than a games distributor. We need more aggregated channels, we need more ways for people to find and discover new apps, and find their way back to the apps."

"We want to be a game network, a lot like Xbox Live," Pincus said, while ruling out the possibility of Zynga making a move on consoles or hardware.

Emm and ay

Pincus also discussed his view on acquisitions. Zynga made headlines for its $180 million acquisition of Draw Something developer OMGPOP, only for the game to shed millions of users a few weeks later.

But Pincus was upbeat about the buyout. "What was unique about it is that they innovated on user-generated content.

"They figured it out and found a way to inspire people to draw. The game still has more traffic today than when we engaged to buy them."

When pushed on whether he would consider the buyout a success, Pincus was hesitant to say. "I think it’s too early to say if the acquisition is successful. I’ll have to tell you in a year if it was successful."

[source: AllThingsD]