14 DAY TRIAL // The online gaming industry is one of the most attractive markets for most of the big companies as it brings huge profits to all involved names. A recent study conducted by comScore revealed that no less than 217 million people are forming a huge online gaming community dominated by one of the most famous companies on the Internet: Yahoo. According to the research, Yahoo Games recorded 52.796 unique visitors in May 2007 in comparison with 52.969 in the same month of the last year. The second place is held by MSN Games that boosted its number of visitors from 34.915 in May 2006 to 40.335 in May 2007.
"With one in four Internet users visiting a gaming site, playing games online is extremely popular. The fact that these websites are pulling in over a quarter of the total worldwide Internet population shows what a global phenomenon gaming has become. The potential of the online gaming arena should be especially appealing for advertisers, as the average online gamer visits a gaming site 9 times a month," said Bob Ivins, EVP and managing director of comScore Europe.
The most interesting evolution belongs to EA Online, the famous producer of the Need For Speed series, that lost approximately 9.000 visitors in one year. If the company recorded 30.525 unique visitors in May 2007, the same month of this year brought only 21.220 consumers.
If we analyze the online gaming on continents, MSN Games and Miniclip are the two Europe giants with approximately 13.000 unique visitors. North America and Asia-Pacific are both led by Yahoo with 18.680 and 20.920 consumers.
"In Europe however, the Yahoo! property proved to be the fourth-most popular gaming site with 8.6 million unique visitors. MSN Games, the second-most popular gaming site in the world, was more consistent in geographical take-up, proving to be either the most or the second-most popular site in every geographical location," comScore said.