PlayFish Achieves 100 Million Games Installed in 18 Months

PlayFish, which publishes games on social and mobile platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Google, Bebo, iPhone and Android, today announced that 18 months after the company was founded, 100 million of its games have been installed by players. The firm boasted that the 100 million mark "is significant when measured against other icons from different eras of gaming. For instance, the world renowned board game Monopoly took approximately 45 years to reach that milestone, while The Sims – the best selling PC game of all time and third most popular video game series worldwide – accomplished it in eight years."

Of course, installing these games is free, so it doesn't exactly seem like an apt comparison to talk about it in the same light as paying for a board game like Monopoly or full PC game like The Sims, but 100 million is impressive nonetheless.

“When we founded Playfish, our goal was to change the way the world plays games by creating experiences that are social and connected between friends,” says Kristian Segerstrale, CEO and Co-founder of Playfish. “Reaching 100 million installs in such a short time is clear proof of social gaming’s popularity and how loyal, enthusiastic and deeply engaged the Playfish community is.”

Playfish currently has more than 30 million monthly active players across its seven games, and each has been a top 10 hit on Facebook. It's pretty clear that social gaming is taking off and helping to broaden the overall gaming audience, not unlike the Wii. "Social games are bringing a fundamental shift to video games - away from a single player-focused activity to one in which people play with their real-life friends," noted Atul Bagga, vice president, gaming research for ThinkEquity. "By putting the emphasis on interaction between friends, social games have expanded the potential reach beyond traditional video games to an entirely new, non-gaming audience."

Whether or not a portion of these "non-gamers" eventually makes the transition into more traditional video games remains to be seen, however.