Report: Casual games are exploding
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 12:15pm by Jack
New research from Interpret posted over at Next Generation today talks of a casual games love explosion that’s happened in recent months. It’s a lengthy read, but it bodes well for established services like Xbox Live Arcade and upcoming ones like the WiiWare service from Nintendo.
A snippet: “Interpret found that, during 2007, casual games reached over 145 million people aged 12-65. Of that figure over 71 million play casual games for one or more hours per week.”
March 5th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
One thing you have to admit about casual games that doesn’t always happen with hardcore games: “If you build them, they will sell!“
March 5th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I bought Brain Age over the past weekend and I’m liking it. It’s quick and simple but still fun. Even the wife loves it. Cas-core baby!
March 5th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I would have liked the double-meaning more if the article meant the opposite.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
So we’ll be getting even more ‘match of the same color’ shovelware games soon. Great :/
March 6th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Interesting stuff. But why are people still calling the ‘hardcore’ gamers “more general gamers” or “the general gaming public”? Are not casual gamers equal, if not more, in quantity?
March 6th, 2008 at 11:04 am
The Playstation’s success made everyone forget about casual games, when in fact casual games were almost all there was in arcades and on consoles (the occasional RPG and Zelda notwithstanding) from Pong until Street Fighter.
The casual game phenomenon isn’t anything new. It just looks that way because the 10-year-old “hardcore gamer” fad is finally coming to an end. If that means the death of gray and brown games, I couldn’t be more pleased.
March 8th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I’d better take that copy of Bejeweled out of my pocket. Don’t want to get hurt.