"If you're big on Facebook, you're going to be big on mobile as well."

That was the theme that dominated Facebook's Owen O'Donoghue's keynote at the Social Gaming and Gambling Summit 2012 in London, with the idea that the two formats go hand in hand standing as the social network's pitch.

Indeed, according to O'Donoghue, Facebook is keenly aware that social gaming studios are increasingly making mobile their focus.

As a result, it is too.

Smart growth

"Mobile is one of the main drivers of growth," opened O'Donoghue. "Our path to growth is going to be defined by mobile to some extent."

O'Donoghue claimed that Facebook remains the largest gaming network on the planet by its own terms – 251 million monthly active gamers currently on board, putting it ahead of the likes of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.

"We see ourselves as the biggest market," he added, noting that while "more and more females are playing games" on the platform – older, married women the dominant force – the really exciting area is the growth Facebook is seeing with male gamers.

"The Xbox demographic is now playing on Facebook, and that's down to developers," he added, claiming Farmville is no longer the be all and end all of gaming on the social network.

"It's slowly changing the perception of what games you can launch of Facebook as well."

Global game

O'Donoghue was keen, too, to dismiss the notion that the only successful gaming companies on Facebook are based on the west coast of the US.

"Five of the top ten developers are from EMEA," he stated, citing the likes of King.com and Wooga.

"We're getting away from the idea that only US west coast developers can be successful. We have a wide spread now – it's a totally open market."

But Facebook isn't just eager to keep developers working solely on Facebook. The social network also claims games that merely allow users to connect to the platform in play as its own, even if they don't appear on its own app store.

The key to mobile success, O'Donoghue suggested, lies with developers being willing to wrap Facebook's users into their game, and with a potential mobile userbase of 600 million, it's hard to argue that he doesn't have a point.