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NYT on the Rise of Casual Games
securitas writes "The New York Times' Michel Marriott reports on the rise and growing importance of casual games to the video game industry. Casual games are sold exclusively over the Internet, are downloaded to PCs from sites like Yahoo Games, Real Arcade and Shockwave.com, and are 'generally simple-to-play, short-duration games that are graphically unsophisticated'. Casual games will represent $250 million of the $8.4 billion in 2005 domestic United States sales according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The article cites Diner Dash, which publisher PlayFirst says has 'sold more than 50,000 copies and continued to sell about 1,000 a day' at $20 per game. The article says that this type of game '... is not found on the shelves of video game or consumer electronic stores. Nor is it sold on the DVD's that deliver interactive 3-D fantasies to millions of PlayStation 2 and Xbox game consoles...'"
I've read it before somewhere, that's for sure...
;)
Or rather, enough telling us how popular casual games are, how about a casual games section on the NYT? Of all the major newspapers on The Guardian have a dedicated games section, but even they just spend most of their time either republishing press releases from i-play or blogging about how casual games are sure to be the next big thing.
It's time for the casual games discussion to move on from just talk. I'm hoping that the Casual Games Conference will be the start of that, especially as 3rdsense will be speaking there
The Slashdot game crowd doesn't like to hear this type of thing, and no question, Zonk and his boy Timmy will log in under assumed names and use their unlimited mod points, but MOST people including a lot of Slashdot regulars, don't give two shits in Hell about video games. Believe it or not, there are a shit-load of people out there that dig Doom95 and Solitaire, and then after a few rounds go back to normal things like socializing with real humans, writing code, doing sports, and other non-game shit.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The article says that this type of game '... is not found on the shelves of video game or consumer electronic stores. Nor is it sold on the DVD's that deliver interactive 3-D fantasies to millions of PlayStation 2 and Xbox game consoles...'
In that case, they probably shouldn't use the term "casual games" to describe them. Casual games (which are, you know, games that tend to be played casually) include sports games and The Sims, which are certainly sold in stores and on DVDs.
Rob
Of the people I know who get into this simple easily played and dowloaded games, all of them are female. Now granted my universe is small compared to, say, the US as a whole; but I do wonder if the reason the game companies can't seem to court female followers is because they already have the games they are looking for.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Total asshole. Mod down.
http://winsupersite.com/images/showcase/xbox360_gu iderev_06.jpg.
This is, I think, what MS is really talking about when they play up their efforts to make the Xbox360 more "mainstream" and capturing a large segment of the market that doesn't traditionally buy consoles. Just how big that market really is, though - well, that's anyone's guess.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
For some reason the last part of the post was removed, which is important for context since it contradicts the article and shows that Microsoft is ahead of the curve on this vs. its competitors. The last part originally read:
Yes, Xbox 360 will include a casual games component, no doubt because of research Microsoft obtained from the Arcade product.