World Cup fuels mobile gaming growth

15 Jul 2010

SINGAPORE: Global mobile media company, BuzzCity, delivered more than 8.3 million games to 14.8 million unique users across the world through its free mobile gaming portal Djuzz during June. This is an increase of 295% in downloads and a 335% increase in unique visitors to the portal as key sporting events and branded titles play a part in mobile game downloads.

Djuzz, which launched six months ago, currently has 5200 games available for download, spread across 29 categories and created by 70 games developers and publishers. The Djuzz Catalogue, BuzzCity's free application store solution, has attracted more than 200 partners to date including operators, handset manufacturers, games developers and media houses globally. In order to meet demand from users around the world, the Djuzz interface is now available in a range of languages including English, French, Thai, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia and Chinese. Soon to be launched are Arabic, Spanish and Vietnamese versions.

The Top 10 games downloaded during June are:

Category	Title	Downloads
Action & Adventure	1. Fatal Fist	531,016
Racing	2. 4x4 Extreme Rally	365,145
Movies & TV	3. Ben 10: Battle for the Omnitrix	304,431
Racing	4. 2D Moto Racing Evolved	279,161
Racing	5. Crash Arena 3D	278,985
Action & Adventure	6. The Great War of Troy	273,858
Action & Adventure	7. Dragon and Dracula	209,879
Action & Adventure	8. Doom II RPG	209,722
Sports	9. Footballz 2009	173,711
Racing	10. Speed Moto	131,637
	Total	2,757,545

KF Lai, CEO of BuzzCity, said, "The impact of the World Cup on mobile games downloads across the world has been significant. Footballz 2009 had fallen out of the Top 10 but made a comeback this month with high downloads from users in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and the US. The seasonality of games is something that developers can take advantage of to boost the number of downloads for their games."

Prior to the World Cup, football games including 2008 World Soccer, Footballz, Euro Football, Footballz 2009 and Footballz Africa Edition averaged approximately a 64% growth in monthly downloads but between May and June this grew to an average of 709%. Apart from the World Cup, other sporting events such as The Indian Premier League, World Twenty20 and various international cricket tournaments in the first six months of the year also saw increased downloads of cricket games (20-20 Cricket and Cricket League of Champions) by surfers in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Since January 2010, Djuzz has served 12.8 million games to a total of 22.6 million unique visitors and average daily users of the portal have now reached 490 000.

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During this period, the most popular game categories have remained largely unchanged with Action and Adventure accounting for 27% of games downloads, Racing accounting for 15% and Sports coming in third place with 12%. However, there are distinct variations in user preference across the globe. In the UK and US gamers exhibited a marked preference for cards and casino games whereas South Africa and Nigeria maintained interest in sports games.

KF Lai continued, "Through our monthly reports which examine consumer trends in mobile, we are able to provide advertisers and developers with strategic advice on how they can successfully interact with consumers to drive high traffic volumes and downloads. The sustainability of popular games depend on a few factors such as the ability to be accessed across multiple devices - both feature phones and smartphones - good graphics, good brand recall and easy gameplay. Following these basic rules will enable you to create a product that holds consumer interest and ultimately becomes profitable."

To view the full report, including the mid-year analysis, please visit the BuzzCity website here.