Casual gaming's market importance is underappreciated

With numerous headlines proclaiming the likes of Nintendo as the makers of the world’s most successful games, and console releases hog all the column inches in the mainstream press, it seams that the casual revolution’s shining stars aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

There’s no doubting the success of Wii Sports, which some sources are suggesting has taken the top spot as the best selling title of all time having sold an apparent 40.54 million units, exceeding the previous record set by Super Mario Bros. of 41.33 million.

Those figures are certainly impressive, but consider the fact that between them, the first two Bejeweled titles from PopCap Games have been downloaded over 350 million times, and seen 25 million units shift from retailers equating to a copy selling every ten seconds. Even spread across the two Bejeweled games available at the time the statistic was compiled, there’s plenty to rival what Wii Sports has achieved.

Comparing stats from separate sources is of course a risky game, which is largely the reason reliable figures on the total value of the international video game business are very hard to source, but nonetheless, the $300 million spent by consumers on Bejewelled titles no doubt holds a presence on the world stage.

Speaking to CasualGaming.biz, Bejeweled’s original designer and PopCap CCO Jason Kapalka was rather modest about PopCap’s success in relation to Nintendo’s: “Nintendo has been following a parallel path to us for quite a while with the DS and Wii. I certainly don’t feel they’re getting credited unfairly or that they ‘stole our thunder’ or anything.

“I think they’ve been doing the same thing we have, trying to move games back from the hardcore crowd to a more general audience – they’ve just been doing it in the console and handheld space where we’ve been largely focused on the web and PC world.  The success of the Wii helps us and the whole ‘casual’ field if anything.”

Other’s are less modest about PopCap’s titles though. Speaking about the third release in the series, Bejeweled Twisted, Cindy Robertson, who wrote, published and sells a strategy guide for Bejeweled 2 said: “There’s no doubt this is the world’s greatest casual video game.” If the game apes the success of its predecessors, she may just be right.

Check back next week for CasualGaming.biz’s full interview with Kapalka.

Bejeweled in numbers:
• Players have spent over 6 billion hours spent playing Bejewelled games (684,000 years, or 60 people playing 24 hours since the last Ice Age)
• A Bejewelled game is sold every 10 seconds
• Early on when PopCap was for sale, there were no takers for a $60,000 asking price
• 350 million copies of Bejeweled/Bejeweled 2 have been downloaded from the web
• 25 million units sold have sold from retailers, equalling $300 million in consumer spending
• There have been 1 billion downloads of all PopCap games in total
• Formed in 2000, PopCap now boasts a headcount of over 200.