Social games help drive growth for China's Tencent network

The largest social network in the world's largest country just keep getting, um, larger. And social games are a big part of that ever-increasing largeness, according to the latest financial results from China's TenCent.

Sure, services like instant messaging, bundled SMS packages and events like the World Cup also contributed to Tencent's 65% increase in year-over-year for the first half of 2010. But their latest financial report highlights many areas where social games helped drive growth, including:

    Tencent mobile business, which saw revenue from mobile social games increase.
    Tencent's QZone blogging platform, where revenue increases were "mainly fueled by enhancements in bundled privileges relating to social games."
    Tencent's online game revenues increased due to 5.9% on the strength of "improved monetization" for games like Cross Fire. These games are expected to do even better in the third quarter because of the "improved seasonality" of the summer school holiday.
    "Our recently launched game titles, namely Dragon Power, a hardcore 2D MMOG, and World of Fantasy, a self-developed MMOG, also contributed to the growth in revenues."

It's not all peaches and cream for Tencent gaming, though. Looking ahead, the company expects "the success rate and extent of success for new game titles may decrease" because of "slowing industry growth, intensifying competition and increasing sophistication of gamers." And the company has recently come under fire for rampant game copying and efforts to push smaller players out of the market. Remind you of anyone?

Surveys: Casual gamers make up 63 percent of all UK Internet users

I guess PopCap was right to launch Bejeweled 3 in London, huh? The newest UK National Gamers Survey has found that 28 million Internet users in the UK, or 63 percent of the total, are casual gamers. Business 2 Community reports that, of those 28 million, 20 million play casual games on a mobile device. Of course, this likely means games including FarmVille and Angry Birds, but way over half of the British Internet population is widespread nonetheless.

Need more convincing? The survey goes on to report that it finds 40 percent of time spent on Facebook is playing games, and that 19 percent of social gamers admit their addiction. While some countries aren't as addicted to social media as the US, the numbers go to show that no culture is immune to the gripping effects of social games.

However, also keep in mind the the survey was conducted by a pro-gamer organization. The B2C report continues to mention more detailed, unsurprising statistics such as demographics and projected profits but just the figure "63 percent" is enough to show the seemingly unstoppable spread of social gaming.

[Image Credit: GamesRadar]

How long do you think it will take before that number reaches, say, 80 percent of all UK Internet users? How will this level of ubiquity affect the industry as a whole?