Posts Tagged ‘Wild Tangent’

Online gaming titles saw 27 percent increase in visitors in 2008

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

According to a new comScore report, 2008 saw a massive surge in online games.  The US market for online gaming grew to a healthy 86 million visitors in December ’08, compared to 67 just a year earlier.  Due to this jump in activity, the total time spent playing online games has risen 42 percent, with Americans’ time spent playing online games grew from 3.7 percent in December ’07 to 4.9 percent in December ’08.

The big winner in ’08 was Yahoo! Games taking the number 1 spot with 19.5 million visitors, a notable 20 percent rise from ’07 figures.  Powerhouse EA took the silver medal with 15.4 million visitors, up 21 percent.  Walt Disney’s legacy continues with Disney Games ranking 3rd with 13.4 million, a 13 percent gain.  Fourth place belongs to Wild Tangent with 13.3 million visitors, rising 74 percent yoy, and Addictinggames.com rounding out the top 5, with 11.3 million visitors, a 17 percent increase.  Most notable is the number 10 position, Spill Games which say only 6.7 million visitors, but a massive 269 percent increase over ‘07’s numbers.

“It appears that online, ad-supported gaming is one of the activities that has benefited during this economic downturn,” said Edward Hunter, comScore director of gaming solutions. “Not only have consumers turned to outlets such as gaming to take their minds off the economy, but as they curtail their discretionary gaming-related purchases they are turning to free alternatives.”

More eyeballs means more display ads

While most ‘traditional’ forms of online advertising are seeing some pretty slim pickins at the moment, the online gaming category is bucking the trend, and has seen some remarkably positive numbers.  From November 2007 to November 2008, the total number of display ads in the online gaming sector rose to 8.6 billion, a 29 percent increase.  Given the increase in more eyeballs, more and more display ads are being served, but players’ frequency of exposure remained relatively the same at 127 ad views/person.  Another positive for the end consumer is that the number of ads per page, a measure of “ad clutter” actually declined 17 percent.

“The growth in display ads in the online gaming category not only underscores the assertion that gamers are increasingly accepting of ad-supported games, but also that the advertising community is recognizing the value of this highly engaged audience,” added Hunter. “It is also likely that the advertising agency community will begin to demand more evaluations of campaign effectiveness in this space as spend and impressions continue to rise.”

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Alex St John – PC games run by micro transactions are the new wave of the future

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Alex St John, the former head of DirectX at Microsoft and now CEO of Wild Tangent has recently stated that gaming consoles will be dead by 2020 and that micro transactions are where it’s at.

“I think you’re looking at the last generation of game consoles, and I think it’s easy to defend that position,” he said while speaking at the Wedbush Morgan Securities annual Management Access Conference.

St John has always had an eye on the future, and a finger on what’s the next ‘hot topic’.  He believes that games will eventually shake themselves out into two distinct communities: One that enjoys a certain type and format of a game, with others enjoying another.  Could he possibly be alluding to ‘First Person Shooters’ vs. ‘MMO fantasy’ games?

From this split St John takes it a step further.  “I think the business model in ten years … It’s going to be microtransaction based. Microcurrency-based economies are just the most efficient way to maximize revenue. They work really well.”

In game advertising is a second shakeout from this split.  “It’s a great alternative payment type for kids who don’t have access to online currency and are huge game players. So, if you don’t have any way to take money from kids, then the only way to get kids to play is by advertisers marketing to them.”

St John sites and targets data based on the current upswing in global laptop sales.  “Kids especially need laptops due to the evolving type of homework and in-classroom work being assigned at schools. Gaming devices are usually confiscated at school, but “no one’s going to take [the kid's] laptop away from him because they need that for their homework.”  This lends itself perfectly to a community driven, gaming society specifically targeting micro transaction and advertising models.

“Laptops are fabulous gaming devices with Wii-like graphics, instantly tied to community, 100 per cent online and a vast volume of free play for kids who don’t have credit cards.”

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