Facebook-successen FarmVille er et af de mest populære online spil, og Xbox Live Arcade er et af verdens største spilnetværker – og så skulle man ellers tro, at det ville give god mening at føre de to sammen, men ikke hvis det står til Zynga, udvikleren bag.

I et interview med IndustryGamers fortæller spildesigner Brian Reynolds, at Xbox Live simpelthen er for småt til overhovedet at overveje at sende FarmVille derud.

"The thing that seems to make social gaming and networking magical is the fact that all my friends are potentially there and they might see the things that I'm posting or doing or expressing," sagde han.

"[Xbox Live's] too small a demographic. Think about, of my friends, how many of them own an Xbox 360? Well, I'm a game developer and I even come from a triple-A space so we might even be in the double digits... 20 or maybe even 30 per cent of my friends might have an Xbox 360, but effectively 100 per cent of them have Facebook and effectively 100 per cent of them have a mobile phone. Of them, probably 90 per cent have a smartphone.

"So when you think about the social potential of a platform... if we made a game on Xbox Live, I think - forgetting about the fact that I might have an artificially high percentage of friends that do it because of what my profession is - the number of anyone's friends that's going to be able to participate in the social experience is going to be a very small number so the amount of social capital that there is isn't going to be very high."

Skal vi lave en sammenligning, havde Xbox Live så sent som i februar 2010 op mod 23 millioner brugere, mens Facebook i januar pralede af 600 millioner. FarmVille havde 62 millioner aktive brugere så sent som i september sidste år. Så Brian kan have fat i den rigtige ende, da langt flere ejer en smartphone end en Xbox 360, og flere millioner har en Facebook-profil fremfor en Xbox Live-konto.