Here is a Wired article from 2004 that talked about the “new” and popular casual game market.
The news this year:
Games industry revenues will double over the next five years: Study
Video Game Business to Double by 2011, Driven by Online and Mobile Gaming
Study: Women Gamers Outnumber Men in 25-34 Age Group
It’s interesting how much more information we have now. Of course, it really only helps MSN Games, Real Arcade, and the developers who rely on them. It doesn’t say much about what a company like Introversion Software or Positech Games can do.
3 replies on “Casual Game Stats”
we can innovate 😀
Good point, cliffski. B-) Of course, innovation isn’t everything.
I just wonder if indies can actually use the data in these studies. I guess another question is if they should. Maybe indies should look for other markets and shouldn’t try to compete with Real.
Compete… with Real? That’s somewhat like asking if an upstart novelist should compete with AOL Time Warner. RealNetworks is a massive operation — a piece of which happens to be a portal for games. I think to some extent we should compete only with our expenses… how BIG your business gets probably has more to do with how much you know about growing a business than the games you make. The ability to stay on top of information like this that is available can’t hurt, though… if there are trends, and you can follow them and even predict them (short term), you might be in a slightly better position with each release than you would’ve been operating in an informational vacuum. That said, I’d wager most of us are in the indie game for the creative freedom over our own projects. So long as you’re in the black and having fun, you’re “doing it right” in my opinion.