SimCity Revival on Facebook Seeks Destruction of CityVille

If you have a Facebook account and browse it even semi-regularly, then you’re probably familiar with Zynga and the massive stranglehold it has on the Facebook community with games like FarmVille, Mafia Wars and FrontierVille. Since its founding in 2007, Zynga has managed to dominate the Facebook casual gaming market nearly unopposed, eventually transforming it into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Of course, whenever a company is making a ton of money in any market, you can expect another company to try to move in on its territory. In this case, Electronic Arts has decided to take a shot at the Facebook market by throwing its popular SimCity franchise directly against Zynga’s CityVille. While Zynga’s city-planning simulator borrows heavily from the SimCity franchise, EA is hoping to resurrect nostalgia and old school charm with the three-year dormant IP. 

EA is enlisting Playfish, a Facebook game developer it acquired in 2009, to develop the SimCity title.  Only time will tell if EA’s weathered franchise has enough fight left in it to topple Zynga’s doppelganger. Two city simulators enter, only one may leave.