Videogame lovers in the US are adapting to tough economic times by turning to low-cost online play, figures released on Friday by industry tracker comScore showed.
Some 87 million US Internet users visited online videogame websites in May, a 22 percent increase from the same month last year, comScore said.
The continuing surge in online game play was attributed, in part, to people opting for “cheaper entertainment alternatives” in grim economic conditions.
The amount of online play is growing 10 times as fast as the overall US Internet population, with nearly one of every two users getting in the game, comScore gaming solutions director Edward Hunter said.
“Online gaming continues to be one of the top gaining categories over the past year,” Hunter said.
“Growth in the category is occurring not only at the top gaming destination sites, but also through viral distribution platforms, including widgets and applications,” he said.
ComScore ranked Yahoo! Games the top spot for online play, saying that the number of visitors there in May rose to 19.4 million, a 6 percent climb from the same month last year.
US videogame giant Electronic Arts saw visits to EA Online rocket 34 percent to 18 million, comScore said.
Spikes in visits were also seen at smaller gaming sites, such as GameNinja.com, Y8.com and GSN Games Network.
More than 2 million people in North America have registered to play online first-person shooter game Combat Arms since Nexon Corp launched a year ago, the South Korean online game producer said.
Nexon games, such as blockbuster Maple Story are free to play online with the company making money from “micro-transactions,” such as sales of digitized clothing or accessories for animated in-game characters.
“Nexon’s Combat Arms reflects the continued growth of the free-to-play landscape and its potential in the North American marketplace,” the company said in a statement.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day