Continuing its push as a destination site for entertainment, MySpace (NWS-A) is readying itself to launch a gaming site on the social network. The strategy is to team up with Oberon Media Inc., an online gaming distributor.
The social networking site is scheduled to launch the new gaming section in January 2008.
This should undoubtedly be a winner for the online community, as casual gaming is growing extraordinarily, and people, especially women, spend a lot of time playing games and interacting.
"This was a very clear area for us that answered a need for enhancing the fun factor on MySpace," said Amit Kapur, MySpace's vice president of business development.
While sales in contrast to console gaming are relatively small, standing at about $380 million last year, and console gaming sales in the U.S. came in at $4.78 billion, it is still set to really take off, with a projected growth of 35 percent next year, about double the growth expected of console gaming.
Most the casual games aren't that complex, but the easy learning curve and quick conclusions draw a lot of people to them. They are also quickly and easily distributed from the Web to a computer.
How Oberon has worked with partners in the past, has been to create custom game sites for them, while then managing the system.
There will also be the essential communication and socializing tools included with the games.
One or possibly two things will happen with this. People that use other casual gaming sites could gravitate to MySpace, increasing the traffic of the destination, or existing site users will start using the gaming section, spending more time on the site, thus increasing actual usage time. Both of those are desirable to advertisers. This is a good move by MySpace. Either way they'll win.
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