Nokia partners with Zynga

Nokia and Zynga have announced a new partnership to bring Zynga’s hit games to Nokia Lumia smartphones and Windows Phones, including Words With Friends and Draw Something.

“We are delighted to bring these two key games to Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone consumers. The Windows Phone Metro UI will deliver an outstanding user experience to consumers, adding more great gaming titles to our rapidly growing portfolio from leading publishers,” said Bryan Biniak, Nokia vice president for global partnering and application development.

For a two-month period following the launch, the titles will be available only through “Nokia Collection” to Nokia consumers, after which both games will be made available to all Windows Phone consumers via the Marketplace.

The announcement underlines Nokia’s focus on delivering great, exclusive app and gaming experiences to Nokia Lumia consumers around the world.

With 100,000 apps available today in the Windows Phone Marketplace, Zynga’s Words With Friends and Draw Something will join other great mobile gaming experiences available on the Windows Phone platform.

After its launch last February, Draw Something quickly and organically grew to become an international hit. The game is built for collaboration between friends — one player draws a picture of a chosen word and the other must guess the word correctly before taking their turn at drawing. Players earn coins by guessing pictures correctly and can earn new shades of color to draw even brighter, more eye-popping pictures.

Draw Something recently launched in 12 additional languages. At its launch, Draw Something for Windows Phone will be available in traditional and simplified Chinese as well as English. Words With Friends is a word building game that challenges players to create the highest-scoring words while playing against family and friends or random opponents. Players can be engaged in up to 20 games at once and are able to communicate with each other through an in-game chat feature. Words With Friends is a part of the With Friends franchise of mobile social games by Zynga.

“Zynga focuses on bringing fun, social and high-quality mobile social games across platforms and devices so players can enrich their play anywhere and anytime,” said David Ko, Zynga’s chief mobile officer.

“We constantly strive to listen to our players who help us focus on the platforms where they want to play. By partnering with top global brands such as Nokia and Windows Phone, we are able to reach more players with our franchise games,” Ko added.