Online Gaming Continues Strong Growth in U.S. as Consumers Increasingly Opt for Free Entertainment Alternatives
July 10 2009 - 12:16PM
PR Newswire (US)
Distributed Gaming Content Publishers Compare Favorably Against
Gaming Destination Sites RESTON, Va., July 10
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader
in measuring the digital world, today released an overview of the
online gaming category among U.S. Internet users, which showed a
significant increase in the size of its audience during the past
year as consumers increasingly opt for cheaper entertainment
alternatives, driven in part by the reality of economic challenges.
The category attracted 87 million U.S. visitors in May 2009, up 22
percent versus year ago. (Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080115/COMSCORELOGO) Yahoo!
Games ranked #1 in the category with 19.4 million visitors,
representing a 6-percent increase over the past year, followed by
EA Online with 18 million visitors (up 34 percent), Nickelodeon
Casual Games with 14.8 million visitors, and WildTangent Network
with 13.8 million (up 16 percent). GSN Games Networks achieved
particularly strong gains in the past year, growing 563 percent to
6 million visitors, due primarily to the additions of entities such
as WorldWinner.com and CrazyMonkeyGames.com. Top Online Gaming
Sites May 2009 vs. May 2008 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University
Locations Source: comScore Media Metrix Total Unique Visitors (000)
May-2008 May-2009 % Change Total Internet : Total Audience 190,858
193,825 2 Online Gaming 71,624 87,102 22 Yahoo! Games 18,340 19,391
6 EA Online 13,374 17,988 34 Nickelodeon Casual Games N/A 14,836
N/A WildTangent Network 11,896 13,844 16 ADDICTINGGAMES.COM 10,216
11,898 16 Disney Games 12,137 11,717 -3 MSN Games 10,017 8,986 -10
AOL Games 8,318 8,711 5 MINICLIP.COM 7,551 8,432 12 Betawave
Partners - Partial List 3,894 7,406 90 Spil Games 4,345 7,163 65
GSN Games Network 910 6,034 563 Big Fish Games Sites 4,392 5,592 27
SHOCKWAVE.COM 5,850 5,158 -12 ARMORGAMES.COM 2,684 3,860 44 Y8.COM
1,243 3,537 185 GAMEVANCE.COM 3,982 3,466 -13 RealArcade Sites
6,143 3,427 -44 IWIN.COM 2,112 3,356 59 Midasplayer.com Ltd. 1,601
2,872 79 "Online gaming continues to be one of the top gaining
categories over the past year growing at ten times the rate of the
total U.S. Internet population and reaching nearly one out of every
two Internet users," said Edward Hunter, comScore director of
gaming solutions. "And the growth in the category is occurring not
only at the top gaming destination sites, but also through viral
distribution platforms, including widgets and applications. In
fact, some online gaming companies that distributed their games
across sites are reaching as many people as the top online gaming
sites." Distribution Platforms Increase in Significance to Online
Gaming Market Distributed content, as measured by comScore Extended
Web Metrix, represents a growing trend in the online gaming space.
Distributed content platforms, including widgets and applications,
can often reach audiences of a size comparable to online gaming
destination sites. MochiMedia, for example, reached a combined
audience of 16.9 million in May, greater than all but two sites in
the online gaming category. Games2Win reached 1.8 million people,
which compares favorably with the top twenty sites in the category,
while Tetris Online reached 165,000 people. Top Online Gaming
Extended Web Entities* May 2009 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University
Locations Source: comScore Media Metrix (Extended Web) Total %
Reach Unique Visitors (000) Total Internet : Total Audience 193,825
100.0 MochiMedia 16,919 8.7 Games2Win 1,822 0.9 Tetris Online 165
0.1 *Measurement of extended web entities requires participation
from publishers to tag distributed content for measurement
purposes. The sites listed do not represent an exhaustive list of
online gaming publishers with distributed content. "The power and
reach of viral content distribution is well captured by comScore
Extended Web Metrix," said Alok Kejriwal, CEO and Co-Founder,
Games2win. "With these latest consumer traffic numbers, we can now
effectively present and strategically leverage our accelerating
audience reach, and share data with our advertisers, marketers and
partners that represents a holistic view of who is playing our
games and from where." About comScore comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR)
is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred
source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information,
please visit http://www.comscore.com/companyinfo. Follow Us on
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http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080115/COMSCORELOGO
http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: comScore, Inc. CONTACT:
Andrew Lipsman of comScore, Inc., +1-312-775-6510, Web Site:
http://www.comscore.com/
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