Game Downloads Top 2.8 million a day – PC Video Game Downloads, More than just Casual Play

September 28, 2007 (PRLEAP.COM) Technology News
PC Video Game Downloads, a site dedicated to video game downloads for the PC, did reviews of the top game downloads and the sites they are hosted on to see if it could gauge just how many PC video games are being downloaded each day. (PC Video Game Downloads site can be found at http://PCVideoGameDownloads.com)

Many say the number of video game downloads for the PC far exceeds video game downloads for the Mac, since the PC is in many more homes. It makes sense that many game developers would first make a video game for the PC platform. If the video game does well, only then would they make the video game downloads for the Mac. Plus, Mac users can also install Microsoft’s Virtual Machine and a licensed Windows OS and play games made for the PC

Exact download numbers are hard to pinpoint, since some PC video game downloads come from sites that only indicate a number of video game downloads over a course of time and don’t differentiate between Mac and PC downloads. In those cases, PC Video Game Downloads just divided by the number of days in the period displayed. It is also hard to gauge how many video game download numbers overlap from site to site due to affiliate programs or other partnerships whose PC video Game download numbers may be duplicated across sites, so that was ignored.

Since this is the first time PC Video Game Downloads has performed these reviews on a site per site basis, it is not certain on that basis alone, weather game downloads are on the rise or not, but by looking at the hype, one clearly gets the sense that the number of games that can be downloaded to the PC is increasing rapidly.

A glance at some top sites says it all:
Popcap claims 175 million Popcap video game downloads over 5 years. Reflexive arcade claims millions of game downloads a week. ArcadeTown claims 12 million unique visits a month. RealArcade, GameHouse.com, Zylom.com and Atrativa.com.br, combined claim more than 750,000 game downloads on a typical day. BigFishGames claims 100 million game downloads between 2002 – 2007, and a whopping 25 million unique visits a month.

Some other interesting notes. DFC Intelligence reported that in 2006, advertisers spent approximately $150 million buying space in casual games, or on casual game sites. With the recent launch of NeoEdge’s MostFun.com where one can get full PC Video game downloads for free just by watching ads surrounding the game, that number is sure to grow and with it, the number of PC video game downloads.

At this point in the calculations, it seems at least 1.2 million pc video game downloads a day occur and that’s only from a sampling of the top sites.

If one considers the XBox live downloads as a PC download, then with the launch of Madden and Texas holdem last year, and within just 3 months Xbox reporting 25 million downloads, the total number of PC video game downloads is up around 1.4 million a day.

So say we double that to try and account for all the other PC video game downloads from sites not listed and it seems like 2.8 million PC Video Game Downloads a day occur. (That’s a lot of bytes.) And at a 1% conversion rate, estimating a $20 sale price, it looks like over $500,000 a day is spent on PC Video Game Downloads. Maybe its time to redefine Casual Games, to mean, Cash Cow.

About PC Video Game Downloads
PC Video Game Downloads is a site dedicated to PC video game downloads, part of a network of Game Distribution sites managed by Wiggly Fish Games. PC Video Game Downloads showcases independently developed games funded by Bang Out Games.

For more info visit http://PCVideoGameDownloads.com


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Contact
PCvideoGameDownloads at PCVideoGameDownloads.com