Chicken or the egg? Economic crisis or casual gaming at the office? ComScore, a digital marketing analyst firm, reports that online gaming portals supplied 86 million visitors in the US last year with a gentle gaming fix, a 27% increase from the previous year.
Yahoo Games was the most trafficked site for office diversion, with a 20% increase in souls, totaling 19.5 million last year. EA Online and Disney Games were the runners-up with 15.4 million and 13.4 million visitors, respectively. All sites saw healthy traffic and ad increases from the prior year. ComScore believes consumers have turned to these outlets to take their minds off the economy and seek free gaming alternatives. Yeah, the first hit might be free, but eventually you'll pay for the harder casual stuff ... and PopCap will be waiting.
Reader Comments (10)
Posted: Jan 29th 2009 1:17PM WiNGSPANTT from TopTierTacticsco said
I have to agree the Zen ball is the best.
Though, I have recently realized that although the Spooky Ball isn't amazing, it is pretty damn good if you can land it early, and if you can land a double SB you are pretty much guaranteed 2 extra tries.
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Though, I have recently realized that although the Spooky Ball isn't amazing, it is pretty damn good if you can land it early, and if you can land a double SB you are pretty much guaranteed 2 extra tries.
Posted: Jan 29th 2009 12:29PM (Unverified) said
Oh shit so casual gaming is increasing. I guess I best start killing myself and those around me because I'm a mother trucking uptight hardcore gamer. You know who I blame. Nintendo. They invented casual gaming 2 years ago.
ROLLEYES.
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ROLLEYES.
Posted: Jan 29th 2009 2:17PM baby sea tuna said
Damn you Joystiq for switching the [+] and the [-] buttons and not telling anyone!
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Posted: Jan 29th 2009 12:34PM (Unverified) said
Sorry for the offtopic but why can't I log in to my profile with the password I use for posting comments? Your system sends me the same password all the time and when I try to access my profile with that I only get "invalid password". None of my emails to you about this were answered. Can you PLEASE! get back to me about this -just once??? Weblogs Inc/Joystiq whoever ... this is really starting to get annoying.
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Posted: Jan 29th 2009 2:19PM baby sea tuna said
Yeah, this site has gone through 2 "overhauls" in the past year but neither have fixed the inherent problems that it had in the first place. Sort of like Epic and their Gears 2 matchmaking patches, I guess...
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Posted: Jan 29th 2009 2:42PM (Unverified) said
Just another reason not to go back to PC, MMOs and casual shit is not what a real gamer wants or needs. 360 has every genre almost (except the dead genres, ie text based adventures, etc) without the pain in the ass problems that drove me away in the first place. If PCs actually ever get past the bad controls and compatibility issues they only need to recover the genres that have crossed over and drop this casual and MMO crap I'll consider it a serious platform again.
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Posted: Jan 29th 2009 3:00PM mrmobius said
Why are MMOs and Casual games less viable gaming options?
If I had a lot of time to waste I'd play MMOs, and I don't so I play a lot of casual games online on websites such as Kongregate etc.
Only at times like this week when I'm after exams and before next semester do I have enough free time to game a lot.
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If I had a lot of time to waste I'd play MMOs, and I don't so I play a lot of casual games online on websites such as Kongregate etc.
Only at times like this week when I'm after exams and before next semester do I have enough free time to game a lot.
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