The Casual Games Association has released its 2007 report on the casual games industry, which offers up a picture of the audience through a mixture of statistics and hard data about the most popular titles available right now.

The association's release on the report itself contains useful data. The report also includes a history of the market; also included is a breakdown of business models and profiles of 12 leading casual games companies.

According to the CGA:

- Casual games are a $2.25 billion a year industry.
- The casual game market is growing at 20% a year.
- Over 200 million people play casual games each month over the Internet.
- Men make up 48.3% of casual game players, women 51.7%. However, women account for 74% of paying casual game players.
- Casual gamers who pay for a subscription and/or are community users average 7 - 15 hours of online play a week.
- Heaviest play times are right after dinner from 7pm - 9pm and during lunch from 11am - 2pm.
- The majority of online portals feature catalogs of over 1,000 games and add between 75 to 300 new games to their catalogs each year.
- Casual games are usually played for a short period of time increments, from five minutes to 20 minutes -- though it's common for people to play one game after another for many hours.

Meanwhile, the most popular casual games worldwide, according to the CGA, are:

Solitaire (Microsoft Windows XP)
Tetris (Tetris Holding, LLC)
Bejeweled (PopCap Games)
QQ Games Collection (Tencent China)
Diner Dash Franchise (PlayFirst)
Mystery Case Files (Big Fish Games)

According to CGA, "Research data from the online casual games market was collected directly from a variety of large casual game portals, publishers, and developers by the Casual Games Association and through San Francisco-based Pearl Research and London-based Screen Digest."

The report will be distributed to all current members of the Casual Games Association, and more information can be found at the association's offical website.

Calling the report a "great primer", Jessica Tams, managing director of the Casual Games Association concluded, "Already more people play casual games than any other type of video game and the industry continues to grow at a very healthy rate."

Christian Nutt,  
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16034

To view the original Casual Games Association Summary:
http://www.casualconnect.org/newscontent/11-2007/CasualGamesMarketReport2007_Summary.pdf