Restaurant City on Facebook, iOS spoils, closes its doors June 29

Sadly, Restaurant City will soon serve its final dish and close its doors forever. Playfish made the grim announcement recently on its forums, setting the franchise's final day on June 29 for both its Facebook and iPhone slash iPad varieties. That gives die hard Restaurant City fans about two months to spend with the eatery simulator before it dies off with a whimper.

"We want to inform everyone in our community that on June 29, 2012, EA will retire Restaurant City on Facebook and Restaurant City: Gourmet Edition on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad," Playfish community manager Bevypoo wrote on the forums. "Both games will no longer be available for play. The decision to retire older games is never easy, as the development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them."

While players will soon watch their Cooking Cash investments dissipate in an instant, Playfish has offered Restaurant City fans a parting gift. Players will score 1,000 free Simoleons in The Sims Social, the developer's largest game on Facebook. Any Cooking Cash sitting in players' accounts will also be transferred to The Sims Social as SimCash as soon as Restaurant City shutters.

It's always a shame to see a game bite the dust, but Playfish's following suggestion makes this one especially tough to swallow: "Players are encouraged to spend their remaining balance of Cooking Cash in Restaurant City until the game retires on June 29, 2012." Yeah, don't waste your hard-earned cash on a game that won't exist in two months. That would just be silly.

Are you bummed to see Restaurant City go? What will you play next? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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EA shutting down Restaurant City on Facebook, iOS

Restaurant City will be taken offline from both Facebook and the App Store on June 29, according to a Wall Photo added to the game’s album today. Players are being encouraged to move to The Sims Social both with a virtual currency bonus and the ability to convert existing Restaurant City premium currency to Sims Social premium currency.

Playfish’s Restaurant City was one of the top restaurant simulation games on Facebook in 2009; it maintained that momentum through 2010 after EA acquired the developer. The game recently marked its third birthday on Facebook in April — having shrunk by more than 90% in size from its peak numbers of 5.2 million daily active users and 18 million monthly active users to today’s 310,000 DAU and 1.8 million MAU, according to our AppData traffic tracking service. The real problem seemed to come for the game around September 2011 when retention (which we can measure by taking DAU as a percentage of MAU) dropped below 20 percent. Restaurant City rallied in October around the time its iOS version, Restaurant City: Gourmet Edition, received a major update — but retention dropped again in early 2012 and Gourmet Edition fell off the top apps lists.

As a genre, restaurant sims still show some growth on Facebook and mobile when they first launch. The games lack staying power, however — we still see Restaurant City as the second-largest game in the category on Facebook after Zynga’s Café World, which is also in decline.

As a company, EA is apparently struggling to maintain its position as a top developer in social and mobile. It’s slipped to the No. 4 position of top developers on Facebook by DAU and wooga is about to overtake it for the No. 2 position on MAU. On mobile, the developer pulled two titles from the App Store for poor performance in as many months this year. EA has also lost a lot of its staff to Zynga in the last 12 months and is now rumored to be facing layoffs, though the company has denied it. EA reports its Q1 2012 results next week.

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CityVille: McDonald's is back with a Downtown Holiday Restaurant

Back in October, McDonald's came to CityVille by way of a large McDonald's business that we could place and master in our towns. After the promotion ended, this restaurant was transformed into a simple "Burger Restaurant," but it has been transformed back into a McDonald's for the holidays. This new restaurant is available to users level 7 and above, but if you never had one to begin with, you will need to purchase one to participate.

The McDonald's Downtown Holiday Restaurant costs 5,000 coins to purchase from the store, but if you already have a restaurant from the previous McDonald's promotion, you can't build another one. It still requires 100 Goods to operate and will give you 500 coins when those goods have been used. As with the previous promotion, you'll earn mastery points for continuing to supply and collect from this business, and if you earn enough points by the end of the promotion period, you'll receive an Arch Light for free.

Currently, a bug is present with this building, preventing some users from seeing their mastery point progress, If the mastery bug has affected your game, we'd recommend waiting it out, as Zynga has already acknowledged the problem and is working to resolve it.

Either way, you'll only be able to add a new Downtown Holiday Restaurant to your town until December 27, and will have until January 3 to master the building for the free Arch Light. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll receive that free, exclusive prize so what are you waiting for? Hop to it!

Check out the rest of our Holiday 2011 coverage right here.

Did you master the first version of the McDonald's Restaurant in CityVille? Is your game suffering from either of the bugs we listed above? Sound off in the comments.

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Round Up Of World Famous Restaurant Logos Design in a Minute

Have you ever encountered any city without a restaurant? Even small towns have variety of food corners, taverns, inns. Can you measure its growth rate for real? No! But we can measure somehow the need to establish a brand mark for this business.

What is this brand mark identity?

If you don't know then let me tell you that it is a small piece of graphical representation which takes full responsibly to boost up the particular business. Trying your hands in a restaurant business is no way a bad idea but if you are not a smart business owner then I don't know if you will be able to take your business on the top or not.

Famous foods restaurants like Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Italian etc are the biggest example of managing business smartly. What I mean to say is they have not only launched their business well but has developed immensely useful marketing schemes as well.

Have you ever seen Mexican restaurant logos design?

If you have not then have a search and see why they are considered to be the best representation globally? You will find them very spicy, scrumptious and yummy. Green and red chilies are their specialties and so you will find these two particular things in almost every Mexican food corner's brand mark. Colors that you will find common are red, green, yellow and orange. In short, colors that are dark and present a spicy taste are mostly preferred when it comes to these brand marks.

There are many other Mexican food restaurants that have designed their brand marks using their specialties. Have a search and you will find many brand marks containing tortillas, Frijoles (beans), Tequila, Salsa, Cerveza etc. This is how; they exhibit what they are good at.

Besides the preceding cuisine, there are many other famous inns that are opened worldwide because of the delicious and sumptuous taste they offer. What sparks in your mind when I say Sicillia, Calabria, Puglia, Lazio, Friuli Venezia Giuliaand?

Obviously the centre point of world arts, Italy, it is not only famous for the tower of Pisa, La Sapienza University and Rome, it is known for the delicious cuisines worldwide. It can be considered on top when we talk about the number of restaurants that especially provides Italian dishes globally.

Therefore, there are thousands of Italian restaurant logos worldwide as well that represents their inns in style. What I have found about these brand marks is that they often incorporate pizza in them. Other important objects that are often employed are chefs, forks, spoons and knife. Most of the time, graphic designers and the food inn owner prefer using their name in special Italian style. That's how they like to design their brand mark.

Hence, there are many other famous world cuisines like Indian, Chinese and Pakistani which can be studied if you want to get your restaurant brand mark identity in your hands. I hope the preceding article will be very useful for you to help build your knowledge about corporate identities.

About the Author:
Beverly Houston works as a Senior Design Consultant at a Professional Logo Design Company. For more information on Mexican Restaurant Logos find her competitive rates at Italian Restaurant Logos.

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EA, Playfish sip on Florida Orange Juice in Pet Society, Restaurant City

by Joe Osborne, Posted Mar 22nd 2011 3:50PM

We can see it now: Executives from EA, Playfish and Florida's Natural Orange Juice rocking on a creaky porch in the Everglades on a Sunday morning, sipping on delicious citrus. "You know," the EA exec says to the Florida Natural suit, "this stuff would rock in our Playfish games." "Really?" the Florida Natural replies excitedly, "How about in Dragon Age 2--" "Don't push your luck." Alright, so it definitely didn't happen that way. Nonetheless, players of both Pet Society and Restaurant City will soon find items sponsored and inspired by Florida Natural Orange Juice in their respective social addictions.

"Florida's Natural recognized the opportunity to build brand preference amongst the hundreds of thousands of avid female players of Restaurant City and Pet Society," Joy Taylor, Director of Global Marketing Solutions at EA, said. "Through this collaboration we were able to enhance gameplay and deliver significant lift in awareness that Florida's Natural doesn't import its juice, which was the goal of their marketing communications."

In Restaurant City, players can give virtual cartons of Florida's Natural to their friends, while in Pet Society they can visit Florida's Natural juice stands and send their friends the good stuff. However, it appears that this promotion is slowly rolling out to players, as I've yet to see the change in either game as of this writing. Either way, Playfish is about to load up on its Vitamin C, and you're all invited. (No, not that Vitamin C!)

[Image Credit: Florida's Natural]

Have you seen this promotion appear in your game yet? What do you think of EA and Playfish's approach to branded game content? Share with us in the comments. Add Comment.
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Tags: ea, Electronic-Arts, florida, florida orange juice, floridas natural orange juice, in-game-advertising, orange juice, oranges, pet society, Playfish, Restaurant City

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Wowwhatsavings - Integral Aspects of a Website for the Restaurant Business

About the Author:
Todd Rideman is the CEO and founder of Wow What Savings. His idea of helping people find a great deal in their city came to life in September 2009.He has become the Ultimate 'Deal Hunter'!!

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