Casual Games In The News
March 2nd, 2007, By Duncan Gough
It’s always nice to see how Casual Games aren’t threatening to fade away. When an industry gets tagged with the ‘cottage’ label, and is spun to look like a real instant-money-winner (1, 2), it can often end with a whimper rather than a bang.
Casual Games, though, don’t seem to be fading in such a manner, as can be seen by two recent news items. Firstly, Allen Partridge has published a book on Casual Games, Creating Casual Games for Fun & Profit. Secondly, Big Fish Games are auctioning off the chance to appear in one of their most successful games – Mystery Case Files. For an industry that has estimates sales of $76 billion by 2011*a lot*, like $1.15 billion in North America by 2011, it’s great to see that both traditional and innovative ways to generating revenue can apply.
Update
Thanks to Brian Robbins for correcting my revenue figures link – the $76 billion figure was referring to the entire mobile industry, not the Casual Games portion.