The folks at ESPN today announced a reboot of their casual games portal ESPN Arcade. The website offers numerous free-to-play titles including ESPN Arcade Baseball, Air Hockey, Craps, Vector Runner, Ping Pong, MTX Devils, Day Drive, Trick Hoops Challenge, Speed Back and Club 300 Bowling.
Additionally, with the relaunch comes the debut of ESPN Arcade’s ESPN Cameraman game under a new franchise titled ESPN Zoom; the game will soon be coming to the iPhone/iPod and ESPN Zoom will also feature Sportscenter’s weekly Freeze Frame photos of the day in an ESPN Zoom: Freeze Frame edition, both online and in a free mobile app, sponsored by Bud Light. And advertising is of course one of the big reasons behind the relaunch.
"ESPN Arcade is adding new opportunities for engaging and bolder advertising options," the company said. "Marketers will have the flexibility to sign on for traditional ad units, expandable rollover ads, video ads, branded ad 'skins' on the ESPN Arcade page and in-game advertising including video pre-roll ads, dynamically served ads outside of game play and contextual ads within the game for many of the games on the site."
Even before the relaunch, ESPN noted that its Arcade portal saw total minutes rise 110 percent in the last three months, according to comScore; so far in 2009, fans spent an average of 7.7 million total minutes per month on the site. 33 percent of total minutes spent are from female players, which compares to 23 percent for ESPN site visitors overall. ESPN Arcade launched back in June 2007 and has nearly doubled its library of free, online casual games and now offers over 70 games.
