Just in time for the holidays, we are pleased to introduce a new gaming experience for Windows Live Messenger 2011. We?re excited about our new release for two reasons:
- We?re bridging the gap between casual and social gaming by adding more social elements into the casual gaming experience.
- This marks the start of strong partnerships with leading games publishers, including iWin, PopCap, Arkadium, GameHouse�, and Microsoft Game Studios. These partnerships bring great games to our consumers on Messenger, as well as cross MSN Games, Windows Live, and Bing.
Before going deeper into this new release, it?s important to explain some nuances between social and casual gaming. Social gaming enables players to interact with many people, many of whom they don?t know (such as Farmville, Frontierville, etc.). Casual gaming tends to be a more solitary experience (such as Bejeweled, Solitaire, etc.). We?re bridging this gap by adding more social experiences to casual games, as well as providing a richer interactive experience, including the ability to video chat while playing games with your close friends and family.
Half of all people online in the US, about 99 million people, play online games
Social gaming has been exploding in popularity since 2008. The percentage of online users in the US who play online games has increased from 40 to 50 percent over the last two years, according to a 2010 Nielsen study. And the number of game-playing sessions has increased nearly 50 percent since 2008, from just under 11 sessions per month to nearly 15 sessions per month. Today over 200 million people use Facebook to play social games ? that?s 40% of the total population on Facebook. In this same timeframe, casual gaming has also gone mainstream, with nearly 85 million people in the US playing casual games at least once a week. Social gaming startups are popping up everywhere, with considerable venture capital investments and acquisitions happening in this space - just read last week?s roundup from Inside Social Games.
Making the casual gaming experience more social
When you use full view in Messenger, you?ll see a new ?GAMES? tab. The games tab centralizes all your gaming activity on Messenger in one view, where you can connect to your Facebook and Messenger friends and add to your casual gaming with social elements like leaderboards, friend feeds, and game updates. Of course, your privacy is important to us, so we made sure that you can control what and how you share from within the gaming experience. You can invite friends to play with you side-by-side within the conversation window, or you can play solo, and then challenge your friends afterwards when you post your high score.
Another new social element on the games tab is the ability to quickly see which friends are online playing, and what their favorite games are, so you can join them in a game. You can even video chat while playing with a friend and see their reactions in real-time.
More games and ways to play?players and game developers both win!
Customers love new games, and game developers are lining up to build them, so we?re taking important steps to improve their distribution and discovery. We?re working with publishing partners around the world to bring world-class games to our multiple platforms, and engaging with them to make the chat experience deeper and richer. Crowdstar is a great example of how we?re partnering with the people who are innovating in the social and casual games space to deliver these experiences to our customers.
Because the new Messenger games tab is built with the expertise of the Xbox LIVE Services team at Microsoft, it makes casual online gaming more relevant to today?s connected world. The launch of games in Messenger marks an important collaboration between Windows Live and Xbox LIVE that we will continue to expand upon. Along with the new Messenger games tab, today you?ll find a new MSN Games preview, an updated Bing gaming experience, and a new online Games for Windows Marketplace. These new game experiences will be rolling out throughout the day today, and thus may not appear for all Messenger customers until late this afternoon (PST).
We?ve connected our online gaming properties in important ways to give game developers the flexibility to reach their target customers wherever they play the most. Whether you play online games on MSN, on Bing, or in Messenger, you will find a familiar gaming experience, where you can track your friends and high scores for your favorite games, regardless of which site you are on.
Look for the new games tab in Messenger today
The new games tab in Messenger will be available later today in the US, UK, France, Canada, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey. More markets will be added later this year. The games tab UI will be localized in all of these markets, but the games themselves will only be in English.
Games vary slightly by market, but we?re making available a selection of more than 35 new free-to-play games, in addition to the tried-and-true favorites you could play in Messenger already. We?ve lined up some great partnerships to bring you a diverse mix of puzzle games, hidden object games, card and board games, and some fun physics games that are almost too unique to classify. And there will be more to come ? as our partners release new games, we plan to roll them out to you weekly. So, check your Messenger games tab often for the latest and greatest games to play while video chatting with your friends and family.
Piero Sierra
Group Program Manager, Windows Live Messenger
WESTERN DIGITAL VOLT INFORMATION SCIENCES VISHAY INTERTECHNOLOGY VIRGIN MEDIA VIEWSONIC
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