Top 10 Casual Games Portals
There is no definitive source of data on the casual games industry, nor any easy way to guess how big the different portals are relative to each other. All the portals are, naturally, rather secretive with their data.
Still, this is the first list I’ve seen by a solid insider that looks fairly accurate. It’s a posting by what appears to be the head of GameFiesta (one of the smaller portals), posted here:
If I was to put a short list of the top 10 by volume (not performance) I would say
1) RealArcade (Gamehouse)
2) Yahoo Games
3) Oberon Network : Pogo, AOL (non exclusive), MSN, Xbox Life, and so on
4) Zylom
5) Shockwave
6) BigFish Games
7) Boonty Games
TryMedia (Because of AOL)
9) Reflexive Network
10) Gamefiesta, Arcadetown, Iwin, Wild TangentI threw the last nuch in at the bottem since most deliver around th esame volume. This is only my opinion but has about 2 years of trailing experience.
February 7th, 2006 at 11:34 am
[...] Phil Steinmeyer’s rumblings on the game biz, programming, and life « Top 10 Casual Games Portals [...]
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:25 am
[...] Anybody who explores the casual/indie development scene quickly runs into it’s dark secret: the industry is dominated by about half a dozen portals. [...]
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:03 pm
You forgot http://www.gamerival.com which also powers MySpace Games. It’s a very under the radar site with very nice traffic and lots of game sales.
January 11th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
What about top portals across Europe? Are there other big contributors there that do not have a US presence?
January 11th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
AFAIK, Zylom and Boonty are the main portals that are primarily European. Other U.S.-centric portals may also have a substantial presence in Europe.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Hey Phil,
Thanks for the valuble Top 10 er 9 information on casual game producers. I have been looking into Oberon, and Big Fish games to produce my future title(hopefully it will be done in 6months), now I have a good list of others to shop my title around to. However, I am strongly leaning towards Oberon.
Thanks again.
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