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| Lavamind Aims Playactive At The Casual Game Market LavaMind, a San Francisco-based game company that has been producing award-winning games for over a decade, has just launched PlayActive (www.playactive.com), a game publisher focused on the 600 million USD casual market. Over the past five years, the market for casual games has grown from almost nothing to a multimillion dollar business dominated by puzzle games, card games, and word games. By 2008, analysts forecast the casual game market will reach USD 2 billion, with USD 1 billion coming from downloads and rest coming from advertising and subscriptions. The sweet spot for casual games is women in their 30s and 40s, but it's not just women playing these games -- it's boys, girls, men, and even the elderly. PlayActive's goal is to design games so that the player is satisfied with the experience within five minutes, but the game itself goes on and on. Unlike the video games, casual games don't cost millions to develop. As the casual game market grows, analysts expect it to rival the PC and console game markets. PlayActive plans to grow with the market, increasing the production value of its games and expanding its distribution from the PC and Mac to interactive TV platforms, wireless devices, portable media players, and even Internet connected consoles, like the Xbox 360. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Game News :: home page |