Just my thoughts and some research!

Sart your engines;

1. “Casual gaming” is loosely defined as anything easy to learn that doesn’t require a big time commitment, like Solitaire, Bejeweled or Diner Dash. Games like those have 200 million active players, and pull in $2.25 billion yearly
2. While Microsoft’s famed Solitaire franchise is the most played casual game ever, with more than 400 million people having spent time shuffling their own cards, Microsoft didn’t directly profit — the game is simply a long-running perk for owners of Windows computers. Free play is typically considered a cornerstone of the casual gaming market. Yet there are a handful of gaming portals that do profit, and account for most of those billions of dollars, including AOL Games, Club Penguin, MSN Games, China’s QQ, and Yahoo Games.
3. Although casual game players are evenly distributed through the population, women account for 74% of all paying players, just as young males dominate the hardcore gaming market. Both segments of the gaming industry would like to move into each other’s paying base.
4. Although some money comes in from advertising on gaming sites, there are other revenue models. PopCap, for instance, distributes Bejeweled for free on PCs, but sells the game on mobile phones. Other companies allow free play on the website but charge for downloads, limit the number of levels that can be played without paying, charge for multi-player versions or sell subscriptions.

Facts;

• The casual games industry rakes in $2.25 billion a year, according to the org’s latest research, with growth estimated at a whopping 20 percent.

• over 200 million people play casual games on the Internet each month. And it’s the only sector of gaming that reflects an appropriate gender balance: The ratio of men to women is nearly even, at 48.3 percent to 51.7 percent, respectively, yet 74 percent of people who pay to play casual games are women. In other words, casual gaming is an area of enormous potential for the gaming industry…

• Nine million accounts on World of Warcraft and six million accounts on Xbox Live are, after all, small potatoes compared to the 200 million suggested in sveral reports, but at least Blizzard and Microsoft (MSFT) can count on predictable revenue from every one of their subscribers. And don’t forget, too, that the most popular online hardcore game may still be Counter-Strike, which last year averaged 200,000 simultaneous players at any given moment on Valve’s game delivery service, Steam.

• It’s also good to keep in mind that the money generated from casual gaming doesn’t always go directly to a developer or publisher. Solitaire, which according to the report is the most popular casual game, is a free application that only indirectly profits Microsoft. Casual games are still making baby steps towards acquiring a captive audience and drawing a steady stream of income from it.

• What exactly is “casual gaming”? It’s odd that casual gaming gets its own special category in some reports when, in fact, it’s a behavior pattern and reflects the way most people play games. Most people play even “hardcore” games casually — 20 minutes at a time, for example, or as a way to relax and socialize with friends. Do we speak of “casual film-go-ers” or “casual sports fans”? Is casual a genre — or an approach?

• The increase in casual MMOs for children, which is challenging sometimes reluctant parents to pay up for subscriptions or virtual items (read this pleaese; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/fashion/28virtual.html?_r=1&oref=slogin), while at the same time drawing criticism from some sectors as being too consumerist (for example this; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7061641.stm (always BBC :) ).

• Club Penguin is only the latest hot player (good article; http://gigaom.com/2007/08/05/did-club-penguin-sell-up-or-sell-out/) in a group that includes heavy hitters like Mattel and its Barbie property (how many, well look here; http://gigaom.com/2007/07/15/barbie-girls/), as well as Sanrio’s virtual world, populated by Hello Kitty (http://www.sanriotown.com/onlinegame/index.php?s=introduction)and friends, which is currently under development.

• Finally, with all this talk of the importance of social media and the social environment enabled by web 2.0 technologies, we have yet to see a true convergence of the casual games space with online social spaces. Sure, sites like Kongregate have a social aspect — but only in the portal framework. Where are the casual MMOs that take advantage of all that the best of social networking has to offer, from Facebook to Flickr to Twitter?

• The 20 percent growth rate is certainly exciting. How long such a trajectory can be sustained, however, depends on how well the casual gaming industry can respond to the challenges of a changing marketplace — and how successfully it can keep developing content that inspires the gaming community.
  

Lets go out with some links that everyone should read and talk about internaly when we have discussions about our strategy and positioning;

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/05/state_of_play/html/1.stm

- http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/2007/04/women_in_games_.html

- http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/17/65-of-women-35-of-men-aged-25-34-play-games/

- http://www.mcvuk.com/press-releases/32172/UK-Mums-Manage-Just-23-Minutes-Of-Me-Time-A-Day-While-Dads-Relax-With-An-Average-Of-4frac12-Hours