Social Gaming is big, there’s no doubt about it, but until recently, one might be hard pressed to guestimate just how big. According to a new report released by The NPD Group, 1 in 5 Americans has actively engaged in social gaming, in one form or another.
Breaking this down into numbers, the NPD report issued that 56.8 million Americans have played a social game on a social network. The included group was sampled from aged 6 and upwards. The “Social Network Gaming” report indicates that 35 percent of these social gamers are new to the scene, and had no previous experience with traditional gaming: PC, console, handheld, or other forms of video game play. That’s a huge percentage, one that developers must be excited about, as this 35 percent is the target audience that could further expand the entire gaming industry. I.e. get them in the door with something light and social, and then move them up the gaming chain. Sure, there’s going to be falloff, but some new percentage is better than no new percentage.
Adding to this excitement, 10 percent of those surveyed indicated that they’d spent real money on microtransactions in free-to-play titles. This would be the aforementioned new percentage. 11 percent said that they were likely to purchase something virtual in the future. The percentage grows!
Conversely however, more seasoned, traditional gamers say that social games are effecting the way their view their play time. These gamers indicated that they spend on average 20 percent less on gaming overall since delving into the social network based gaming world.
This new 10-11 percent of incoming gamers are more likely to be either female or older according to the report. When viewing the current state of social gamers, the report was fairly evenly split, with 47 male and 53 percent female.
“Although 35 percent of social network gamers are new to gaming, it’s clear that a lot of existing gamers have been drawn into the social network gaming arena as well. This impacts both the time they spend with other types of gaming, as well as the amount of money they’re spending on gaming. As more players are drawn into these games, the entire games industry is going to feel, and have to adjust to, the impact.”" says NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier.
[source: Gamasutra]
eMarketer states that advertisers spent around $144 million in 2009, and the 20 percent 2010 increase is based on conservative estimates, as eMarketer themselves point out that the social games business continues it’s juggernaut growth pattern.
And while Japan might be quietly chugging along, recent news from Japanese mobile games portal DeNA, particular in regards to revenues, has firmly planted Japan’s social gaming market firmly on the map. So much so that DeNA is rivaling social gaming darling Zynga’s numbers.
While Zynga has no short term plans to go public (at least that we know about), industry analysts Jay Gould, Lou Kerner, and Bill Auslander estimate that if Zynga were to go public tomorrow, shares would trade around the $15.75 per share mark. This estimate is determined based on a multitude of factors, one of which being the price that current Zynga employees could fetch on the secondary market by selling their stock options.
Only about a month and a half after Open Feint’s announcement of their 
“We are very confident MetroGames will become one of the world leaders in social gaming during this next wave of explosive growth in the industry. We already have more than 30 games online across Facebook and our own social gaming platform and many more to be released during 2010. We are pleased Playdom has recognized our potential and chosen to invest in us,” said Damian Harburguer, CEO of MetroGames.
Not to be left in the dust, San Francisco/Berlin based 
