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Casual Games Worth Billions and Growing
Casual Games Worth Billions and Growing
The Casual Games Association (the CGA) recently completed its 2007 report on the casual games industry. If you own an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, you may not be a typical casual gamer, but casual gamers are becoming increasingly important to the game industry.
According to the CGA, casual games are bringing in revenues of $2.25 billion per year, and that amount is growing 20% annually. That’s why nearly every large publisher is opening (or recently opened) a casual gaming division, and why most web portals have their own casual gaming section. It’s important to keep in mind that while casual gamers aren’t hardcore gamers with bleeding-edge PCs or new consoles, they are a large percentage of gamers – and often don’t know it themselves. Casual gamers are the folks who play Solitaire on their PC during lunch, or a little Bejeweled before bed.
The CGA claims that 200 million people are playing casual games over the internet, and that 51.7% of those people are women. Importantly for publishers, 74% of those willing to play for casual games are women, and casual gamers who pay to play average seven to 15 hours per week online. Casual gamers are most likely to play during lunch or right after dinner.
The CGA listed the most popular casual games as:
- Solitaire
- Tetris
- Bejeweled
- QQ Games Collection
- Diner Dash
- Mystery Case Files
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Thought about posting this yesterday. Impressive Stats. I guess horse games aren't that bad either. :)
Oh noes. Does that mean there'll be another Moorhuhn? ;)
The development of Casual Gaming products is so short, that it is, indeed, that they have a huge surplus. The lasting appeal, and depths of Casual Games are somewhat limited, though, if compared to not-casual games offering a unique videogame experience. Wii, NDS & Co. might need a lot more Flash games programmers next year ;) ...
It's a great deal for the publishers - A lot of casual games return more revenue per invested dollar than traditional, hardcore games. Of course, that doesn't necessarily make them deep, exciting or engaging. That just mean's they're cheap to make. But as we all know, some can be really good.
I just think it's an interesting topic to follow.