hello, does anyone know where can I find some reliable information (from a research firm or an association of some kind) regarding the casual games industry - market size, revenues, profit, growth, forecast, trends, etc? or maybe some numbers regarding some of the big players in this field (i.e., PopCap)? thank you very much. ccc123

That kind of data is very expensive. I assume you just want free information?

yes, i am talking about free data.

well, some data is already available for the public. if you go to the igda's website and download the "2005 Casual Games White Paper," you'll get some pretty cool info... i am sure that there is more out there. it just takes time and effort to do the search.

i thought that suggestions/hyperlinks for places to go to will flood this tread. damn, i guess i do have to roll up my sleeves... :)

thanks anyway.

The more reliable it is, the more it costs. The more tailored it is to your business, the more it costs.

...market size...
What market? The total number of possible consumers? That's easy: Roughly 6 billion people and 2 billion corporate entities globally. The total number of males between the ages of x and y living in the United States? Check the census. If you want the market for your specific product, you'll have to pay. IGDA's white papers can give you some very rough values, but they are not accurate.

...revenues...
If the company is public, check their stock information. If they are private, it is a trade secret and relesing it could even get small businesses into legal trouble.

..profit...
See revenues

...growth...
What kind of growth? Number of companies? Number of games? Number of games per company? Quality of games? Games in a genre? Many of those numbers will fall in the 'trade secret' bucket. Doing some work on Google can give you rough estimates. Published reports by IGDA and others, and looking at the dates of their statistics can also help with those.

...forecast...
VERY business specific and VERY unreliable. You must pay for major research to get that.

...trends...
See growth

...some numbers regarding some of the big players in this field ...
See all of those above. If they are public (like EA) you can request all kinds of information. Their investor information has a lot to pull out. The same with their press releases.

Quote: Original post by frob
If they are public (like EA) you can request all kinds of information. Their investor information has a lot to pull out. The same with their press releases.

Then again, if you're planning to compete in the same market-niche as EA, and still don't have enough money to buy market research documentation, you may have bigger problems...

The Casual Games Industry is aware of the problem, and the IGDA Casual Games SIG is working with the big distributors, through an independent 3rd party, to work at releasing that information through controlled channels.

It doesn't necessarily help you right here and now, though.

You can often speak to the aggregators (they're usually a very friendly bunch), and many of them will give you good numbers of-the-record. It won't be something you can take to your VC, but at least it can form the initial drafts of you P&L forcasts.

Allan

Quote: Original post by __ODIN__

Quote: Original post by frob
If they are public (like EA) you can request all kinds of information. Their investor information has a lot to pull out. The same with their press releases.

Then again, if you're planning to compete in the same market-niche as EA, and still don't have enough money to buy market research documentation, you may have bigger problems...

If you were the size of EA as a whole, I agree. Even their online games division you'd have problems. But if you are looking for rough numbers for pogo, you can get them.

Their invester information does break down pogo.com into a bit of detail. Sure, you won't be offering a full site like theirs, but by poking around, looking at the number of players on each game, and looking at their reports, and searching for historical versions, you can guesstimate a lot of information.

Just like the IGDA papers, it is still very rough information, and not relevent to a specific niche. Accurate information requires a lot of work. Either work by yourself, or expensive third-party market research.

thanks guys.

allan, can you please tell me who are these "aggregators" that you just mentioned?

and now that we discussed the process of looking for data, did anyone find any rough numbers (free vs. purchased downloads) for some of the most popular casual games like rebound, super collapse, zuma, diner dash?

thanks.

I bought a copy of Zuma personaly, so I know they sold at least 1 copy. :).

Why dont you email a few smaller PUBLISHING companies. Im talking dexterity, real arcade, etc. You want to ask the right questions though, as like people mentioned, people consider that kind of information capital in itself. A good question to ask (publishing companies) would be (after first exagerating your capabilities) wanting to know what sort of games they would be looking for. Generaly, what they are looking for is what they consider to be profitable.

Quote: Original post by ccc123
thanks guys.

allan, can you please tell me who are these "aggregators" that you just mentioned?

Sorry; 'aggregators' is what they're usually called in mobile bizdev; just finished writing an article on that, so my mind was stuck :)

Distributors : provide retail services (digital shrinkwrap, CC processing, advertising, digital shopfront) for casual games. Examples are Bigfish, Reflexive, Real.

Publishers : provide distributor services, in addition to sometimes funding project development (project management, risk capital). Examples are Oberon and PlayFirst.

Many of them provide 'aggregator' services, in that they collect games from a number of developers, and provide digital distribution services for other websites. This could be under the aggregator's own brand-name (as an associate reselling package), or through white-label services (where the branding of a 3rd party will replace the aggregator's). Examples include Boonty and Oberon.

As you see, there's a fluid transition here; it IS important to understand that these guys provide the gatekeeping services to the true 'casual' market. While you can sell your game on your website, Granny is unlikely to Google and download it on her own (she'll instead find it while reading her daily MSN news). Thus getting their involvement will be critical for calculating good numbers.

Turnover % is usually between 0.5% and 2.0% (depending on a number of factors). So if you are seeing 100,000 downloads, you're usually looking at around 1,000 sales. Your milage may vary, of course.

Allan

thank you very much.