At this morning’s WWDC keynote Zynga CEO Mark Pincus announced that FarmVille will be coming to the iPhone. The insanely popular Facebook game will soon be playable on-the-go with access to the same farm and the same friends list as the web-based version. It might not look as nice, but it will feature an in-game (in-app?) store along with push notifications for harvesting and other activities in the game. The in-game store will have exclusive items for the iPhone like a Snow Leopard in honor of Apple’s OS.  You can say all you want to about iPhone games but integrating an online web based game with a mobile device is pretty awesome. The app is slated to launch at the end of June.

[Source: TechCrunch]

Farmville may be buying the farm so to speak, as the insanely popular farming simulation lost 7.7 million players last month. Is this a sign that Farmville and other Zynga games were nothing more than a trend, or is it something more serious?  Gamasutra has reported that Facebook games such as Mafia Wars and Farmville aren’t exactly doing so well these days. May was an exceptionally bumpy month for the social games, having lost more than one million players in 12 of the 25 Facebook games.

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In an interview with Bloomberg Television President of EA Sports Peter Moore stated that we will be seeing a Madden NFL game on Facebook saying “We have to make Madden more accessible. You’ll see us on Facebook going forward.” Although no official statement has been made regarding Madden appearing on Facebook, every sign seems to point towards that happening. EA recently acquired Playfish the company behind such Facebook games as Pet Society and Restaurant City. If you need more proof, EA Sports has been very active in the online free-to-play market with the recently released Tiger Woods Online and the upcoming FIFA Online.

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That’s right.  I’m not joking around here.  Every single one of you, readers and writers alike (and especially you editors), can go straight to hell…

With this all new application for Facebook!

Fans of Dante’s Inferno with nothing better to do until it’s February release can now join other fans on Facebook with the new application aptly titled “Go To Hell.”  Basically, users can send their friends into one of Dante’s nine circles of hell with the click of a button.  It’s a device I wish were readily available in the real world, though it would most assuredly mean my own visit to probably every one of them.  This application from Visceral Games and EA is yet another marketing gimmick for the game that has already created quite a bit of e-drama across the web.  From fake Christian protests to nipple-fearsome boss videos, EA is truly taking the “any publicity is good publicity” approach to Dante’s Inferno.

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It has been announced that Xbox Live members can now sign up for the new Update Preview program that will bring such features as Twitter and Facebook. As in the last XBL dashboard beta, the Xbox team reminds us that “We’re looking for multiple thousands of participants, so your chances of making it in are good.” However, just signing up does not guarantee a spot in the preview. Though the beta comes as no surprise, some are wondering why the Last.fm feature was not mentioned in the press release. While we speculate as to the fate of Last.fm on Xbox Live, make sure to sign up for the preview at http://connect.microsoft.com/XboxLIVEUpdate.