Given it's the world's largest portal for browser-based games, with over 200 million registrations, you won't win any prizes for working out free-to-play German outfit Bigpoint is in the scale business.

While around half its 850 staff make games such as Dark Orbit, Farmerama and Battlestar Galactica Online, the other half handle issues such as technology, servers, billing and community.

They also operate its third party publishing platform business, enabling other developers and publishers - including the likes of EA - to release their games on Bigpoint.com.

New horizons

But even with 250,000 new registrations daily, Chief Games Officer Philip Reisberger is looking for further expansion in 2012; notably on mobile and tablets.

The company's already started to experiment, releasing free iPad game Toon Racer earlier in 2011. It's also in the process of releasing an iOS companion app to its massively popular Farmerama game - called Farmerama: Harvest Time - hopefully before the end of the year.

The process has taken longer than the company initially expected, however, as it started 2011 with the aim to release some titles on iOS and Android, as well as buying external development talent.

An assumption is that with the likes of Zynga and DeNA also on a social and mobile acquistions prowl in 2011, valuaions have perhaps been higher than expected.

Time to prepare

More generally, Reisberger points out that it often takes longer than expected to create internal expertise for new platforms.

"We're currently in the process of understanding the market," he says, stressing that "Mobile is very important for us.

"But we can't just take our portfolio and move it onto mobile," he adds. "You have to look at which game elements will work, the controls, and what sort of things players will want to do.

"Of course, the holy grail for us is getting our users 24/7, but you have to offer different aspects for different platforms."

A related opportunity is the nascent tablet market.

"I think the tablet will be the next big competitor to the console," Reisberger says. "That was one of the reasons we gave all our staff tablets last Christmas."

Big, bigger

Still, he's currently playing his cards close to his chest. No doubt, the company's broader mobile and tablet strategy will become clearer in 2012.

But with a potential 500 million smartphone devices, and fast growth expected in markets such as Brazil and Latin America - which are not well penetrated with fixed line connections - the potential is obvious.

Indeed, with the advantage of its own platform - including over 200 payment methods, plus industry trends such as HTML5 - Bigpoint looks particularly well positioned to cash in.

And it's refering to this, and Bigpoint's independence from other companies such as Facebook, that sees Reisberger smiling broadly as he considers the future.

"We're where Zynga wants to go," he says.