CasualCharts: Summarising the Top 10 Lists

May 22nd 2008 at 10:19 by James C. Smith

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Overview of Downloadable Casual Games 2008-05-11 through 2008-05-17

Build-a-lot 2 continues to dominate the downloadable casual game portals and is ranked number on the CasualCharts.com overall top sellers list for the week. Pet Shop Hop earned the overall number two spot, thanks to its place as a number one on Yahoo and in the Top 10 on both iWin and BigFish. This click management game was just lunched the previous week on most portals. Dream Chronicles earned the overall number three spot this week by ranking in the Top 10 on five of the seven portals included in this analysis. This adventure game stayed in the Top 10 of most portals since it was released about four weeks ago. Once again Family Feud Online Party mocks my scoring system by ranking fourht overall simply by being number one on iWin every day this week.

Meanwhile, Cooking Academy barely out-scored Airport Mania to get the overall fifth spot. Reflexive, Yahoo and iWin each rank this game in their Top 5. Cooking Academy is one of the rare top 10 hits that is not easily classified as Hidden object, Click Management, Sim, Match 3 or Adventure.

Spotlighting the overall Top 5 list each week makes me focus a lot on games that are currently doing well on many portals at the same time. But each portal has a few gems that are unique to that portal. Let's take a look at a few examples:

Shockwave currently has an exclusive on Carrie the Caregiver 3. This click management game has been number on their Top 5 featured games list ever since May 13th when they launched it.

Yard Sale Junkie has been climbing it way up the Reflexive Top 10 sellers list for a week and isn’t on any other portal yet. The hidden object game blends many elements from click management and action games for a rather unique experience.

Real is the only major portal with Clue Classic in their Top 10 lists. This week it fell from second to third on Real Arcade’s bestsellers list.

Mystery Cookbook ranked as high as fourth on iWin’s Top 10 list this week and couldn’t be found on any other major portal.

Many of the Big Fish Top 10 sellers are games that are exclusive or nearly exclusive to Big Fish. Its Top 4 games are Hidden Mysteries - Civil War, Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express, The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, and Enigma. Two of these games are exclusive to Big Fish and the other two recently appeared on iWin but are on no other major portal. Lately it seems like a game can’t make it into the Big Fish top three unless it is an exclusive on Big Fish.

MSN has an exclusive on Women's Murder Club but it doesn’t appear in the Top 10 lists since that list hasn’t been updated for many weeks.

Yahoo and AOL don’t currently have any exclusives and rarely do. They usually only launch a game after it has proven itself on other portals.