Online Gaming Continues Strong Growth in U.S. as Consumers Increasingly Opt for Free...

Fri Jul 10, 2009 12:16pm EDT
 
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Online Gaming Continues Strong Growth in U.S. as Consumers Increasingly Opt
for Free Entertainment Alternatives
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 www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

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SOURCE  comScore, Inc.

Andrew Lipsman of comScore, Inc., +1-312-775-6510, press@comscore.com

 

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