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casual gaming
Deal Radar 2008: PlayFirst Plays Casual Games Well
PlayFirst is a leading publisher of casual computer games. Based out of San Francisco, it is focused on creating shared casual game experiences around “lasting original brands” with emphasis on “rich story and character”. Few of the more popular PlayFirst titles include the Diner Dash series, Wedding Dash, Chocolatier and Dream Chronicles. My interview with
Games: Console Games – Hardware + Software = Ka-Ching!
By Gabe Zichermann, Guest Author The first home game console was called the Magnavox Odyssey. Introduced in 1972, it had a number of design flaws that would eventually doom its future, including the need for plastic TV overlays, boring games, and some dubious marketing strategies. Ultimately however, it was the closed nature of the product
Games: From Donkey Kong to Dominance
By Gabe Zichermann, Guest Author By now, I’m sure you’re familiar with the story of Pong, Atari and the founding of the modern videogame business. In the time before the Atari 2600’s ubiquitous brown box and its legions of cartridge-crazy followers, computer scientists and nerds had long toiled to bring games to the emerging technology
Building the Electronic Arts of Casual Gaming: PlayFirst CEO John Welch (Part 10)
SM: What are some of your key learnings from this journey so far? JW: At my first startup we cut off our consulting business to focus on raising venture capital that never materialized. Cash is king. Build the business that makes you money and keeps the doors open; it can finance your riskier investments. During
Take-Two (TTWO) Takes Two Steps Back
By Frank Lara, Guest Author What happens when you delay your flagship product and you exist in the cut throat gaming sector? How about a 22% drop in your company stock and plenty of time to beat yourself up questioning – what went wrong? Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) finished the week down 26% when
Building the Electronic Arts of Casual Gaming: PlayFirst CEO John Welch (Part 7)
SM: How did you penetrate the market and get early traction? JW: While I was at Shockwave, I had the privilege to work with some of the top developers in casual games. We saw the opportunity to help those developers do what they love – focus on making games – by becoming the first publisher
Building the Electronic Arts of Casual Gaming: PlayFirst CEO John Welch (Part 6)
SM. How big is the market? How do you calculate TAM (Total Available Market)? JW: The casual games market is expected to hit $1.5 billion next year. More than 200 million people play casual games via the Internet today, with about 60 million downloads each month (Computerworld). Analyst firm DFC Intelligence predicts that casual games
Building the Electronic Arts of Casual Gaming: PlayFirst CEO John Welch (Part 5)
SM: What was the market landscape like when you founded the company? Competition? Competitive Positioning? JW: There was no formal publisher in the casual games space prior to PlayFirst’s entry. It was like authors not only writing books with no editor and no research staff but also having to scurry around from bookstore to bookstore
