According to Nielsen's latest report on the casual games business called Insights on Casual Games, there are roughly 41 million Americans playing casual games today and card games (played by 88%) are easily the most popular - puzzle games are a distant second at just 9.5%.
“Casual games are very popular, especially in this economic environment, and they enjoy a broader audience than typical, hardcore PC games,” said Brad Raczka, marketing analyst for Nielsen’s Games division. “Not only does casual gaming draw in traditional ‘gamers’ such as teens and young adults, but also prime advertising targets such as stay-at-home moms, retired people and younger kids.”
Interestingly, Nielsen found casual games to be just as "sticky" if not more so than traditional computer and video games. Although less time is spent per session playing casual titles (less than half the time, actually), the players often come back to the games months later.
"Measured over a seven-month period, the recurring game play rate for casual games was found to match or exceed that for non-casual games. For example, about 20 percent of the 47 million unique gamers who played Microsoft Solitaire at least once during the seven-month period, came back to the game at least once in each of the seven months measured. By comparison, about 12 percent of the 5 million World of Warcraft players who played the game in two or more months returned to it at least once every month," Nielsen noted.
Nielsen also confirmed what most of us already knew: casual games are played far more by women. 58% of the casual gaming audience is comprised of females, while males make up 75% of those playing non-casual shooter games, and 63% of those playing role-playing games. Players of non-casual games also typically have more powerful computers, better suited for high-end gaming; players of non-casual games were found to have computers with much more memory, averaging over 2 gigabytes, compared with just 0.5 to 1 gigabytes for casual gamers.
