'Flash market is almost double the size of console business'

Citing Comscore stats, Jones said that 359m people played online casual games in the last month - versus the total estimated console base of 206.2m (covering the current and previous generations of hardware, stat taken from VGChartz).

Comscore also says that over 37 per cent of all web traffic is generated by online gaming.

In the UK specifically that number is higher: 40 per cent of all web traffic is generated by online games (14m players vs the UK's total internet audience of 35m).

Added Jones: "The online world gets wrapped-up in unique users. So if you consider each games console hardware sale as a unique user - suggesting that machines with multiple players are equalled by individuals that own more than one machine - online casual gaming is already bigger than the traditional games industry."