With over half of Asia’s Internet traffic generated from repeat visits to gaming sites, virtual worlds are becoming an attractive and cost-effective way to reach consumers. In addition to the social allure and entertainment value of casual gaming, as many will testify, online games can also be highly addictive.
The comScore study of online gaming in the Asia-Pacific found that 51% of the region’s Internet population visited gaming sites in August 2008, spending an average of 87 minutes on the sites and averaging 11.5 visits per visitor during the month.
The gaming culture has also been perpetuated by Asian game providers who have demonstrated success in enticing new MMORPG players by adopting the free-to-play model. Often Internet users are lured with a free basic game version and when they get hooked, encouraged to purchase items such as avatar accessories, purchase of virtual items and level add-ons.
Wired South Korea has the most avid online gamers who spend the most time on gaming sites, followed by Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The South Koreans played more than three hours per person during August and visited gaming sites an average of 13 times. The Taiwanese showed the next highest level of engagement by making 15.5 visits in the month and staying for an average of 151 minutes per visitor.
China led the region with nearly 55% online gaming penetration and the most number of unique visitors (90,292) in August. Singapore with its over 4 million population had the second highest gaming penetration (49.6%), followed by Australia with 45% penetration. India reported the lowest penetration with only 27% of its online population visiting a gaming site in August.
*Excludes searches from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. **Improvements to universe estimates in certain Internet markets have recently been made. We caution against trending with data prior to July 2008 – Source: comScore
QQ.com Games, operated by China-based Tencent Holdings which is well-known for their leading instant messaging platform QQ, had the honour of being the most popular gaming site, hosting more than 44 million visitors in August, more than double the size of the next site in the top 10.
Yahoo! Games was ranked second with 20.2 million visitors, followed closely by China’s 4399.com with 20 million visitors and South Korea’s Nexon Corp. in fourth placing.
QQ Games also led as the most engaging gaming site in the region with visitors averaging nearly 47 minutes on the site in August, followed by 4399.com (38 minutes), and Yahoo! Games (35 minutes).
