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Fastest-Growing Casual Games Company Launches New Game Hub: PlaySushi.com

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 04:30 CDT

Owner of Top-5 Gamevance.com Further Expands into Exploding Vertical to Connect Millions of Casual Gamers with Thousands of Games from Industry's Top Publishers and Independent Developers

IRVINE, Calif., April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Ads, the owner and operator of Gamevance.com (the country's fastest-growing and top-5 casual gaming site, which attracts over 12 million unique visitors a month(1)) today announced the launch of PlaySushi.com (www.playsushi.com), a new casual games hub featuring thousands of games, including proprietary Gamevance games, and games from top-tier publishers and third-party developers. This latest and most advanced casual game offering from Future Ads is expressly designed to provide a premium gaming experience for its users and unprecedented revenue opportunities for individual game developers and publishers -- all while offering advertisers powerful opportunities to target and engage this highly responsive, exploding demographic.

"With 200 million players worldwide(2), casual gaming is one of the fastest-growing - and most recession-proof - categories online," said Future Ads CEO Jared Pobre. "But there are tens of thousands of great games out there 'all dressed up, with no place to go.' PlaySushi.com's mission is to be the first online destination that can successfully marry players, independent developers, major publishers...and profits."

Taking the hugely successful - and profitable - Gamevance model a step further, PlaySushi is designed to provide tens of millions of users with an almost limitless selection of games, while simultaneously enabling developers and third parties to easily and efficiently generate revenue and profits, all without impacting the positive - and free - gaming experience of its users.

The Benefits/Innovations of PlaySushi.com

For Users: PlaySushi's mix of games includes proprietary games from its hugely popular sister site Gamevance (www.gamevance.com), such as Duck Hunting and Spy Racer; but, unlike Gamevance, PlaySushi also offers developer-uploaded games and games from top-tier third party publishers, resulting in an almost unlimited variety of games across every category and skill-set. According to Pobre, some of the best, most creative and innovative casual games are from individual developers who need a distribution platform to make them profitable. By enabling these developers, PlaySushi provides users with access to a constantly refreshed suite of the latest and most creative casual games.

For Game Developers and Publishers: Despite the growing numbers of high-quality game developers and publishers, the industry has lacked a platform that ensures not only visibility, but also revenue generation. PlaySushi combines the stimulus of revenue sharing with an unprecedented simplicity and cost-efficiency for developers and publishers by providing an extremely user-friendly, self-serve platform where partners can register and upload games in minutes. These unique, developer-friendly features are designed to ensure that PlaySushi will provide a high volume and variety of games to consumers.

For Advertisers: The rapid growth and engagement of casual games users provides marketers a rare and, in spite of the current recession, gigantic opportunity. While the casual gaming demographic traditionally skews female(3), as it expands, it is rapidly changing, cutting across the general population. While Gamevance generally targets casual gaming's high-value female demographic, PlaySushi is designed to attract the slightly younger - and growing - male-skewing casual games audience, providing advertisers with unique opportunities to interact with this new, very desirable and responsive demographic within casual games.

Recession-proof Vertical

Following the enormous success of sister site Gamevance.com, (the sixth fastest-growing web property overall in January 2009(4)) whose most significant growth and profits have come in the midst of the severe economic downturn, PlaySushi is tapping into a vertical that industry experts agree is proving counter-cyclical and recession proof - and that is highly responsive to online advertising. In fact, according to comScore, the online gaming category grew 27 percent during the past year, to 86 million visitors by year-end 2008, with the total time spent playing online games jumping 42 percent - and, while other verticals saw dismal performance, display advertising views for online games spiked 29% year over year in November(5).

"US consumers play online games more often than any other type of video games(6) and they're playing them more than they watch online video or visit social networking sites,(7)" said Pobre. "PlaySushi seeks to provide this massive audience with a new hub of entertainment, one that we anticipate casual gamers will bookmark and return to as often as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter."

About Future Ads

Founded in 2001, Future Ads (www.futureads.com) is one of the online industry's most rapidly growing interactive marketing firms. The Company owns and operates Gamevance.com (www.gamevance.com), a top-5 game site which attracts 12 million monthly unique visitors and is one of the fastest-growing game sites and Web properties overall. The company enables advertisers to target the fast growing, highly desirable, and responsive casual gaming audience through Gamevance.com and through its recently launched casual game hub, PlaySushi.com (www.playsushi.com). The company's ResultLinks, a self-serve and in-text display ad network, is the fastest-growing in its industry. Blending traditional and new media expertise with cutting edge technology, Future Ads' mission is to provide marketers with the most efficient, easiest-to-use, most profitable sources of Internet traffic.

(1) comScore Media Metrix 'Top Ten Gaining U.S. Web Properties,' January, 2009

(2) Casual Gaming Association Report, 2008

(3) Casual Games Market Report, 2007

(4) comScore Media Metrix 'Top Ten Gaining U.S. Web Properties,' January, 2009c

(5) comScore release: 'Online Gaming Surges as Gamers Seek Free Alternatives in Tight Economy,' 1/28/09

(6) Pew Internet Life & American Project 2009

(7) Parks Associates, 2007 Casual Gaming Market Update

SOURCE Future Ads

Source: PR Newswire

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