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"There are 211.5 million people playing games in the United States, a loss of 12 million players (5 percent) from 2011's numbers, the NPD reports. Not all of the gaming categories lost players, however: Mobile gamers rose 9 percentage points to take 22 percent, and digital gamers gained 4 percentage points to 16 percent. This makes mobile gamers the largest audience segment, surpassing core gamers, which held the top spot in 2011. The remaining categories - core, family and kid, light PC, and avid PC gamers - lost 17.4 million people this year. This is a "slight decline," the NPD says."

Virtual goods business model gains back from publisher THQ. They have invested in virtual goods and microtransactions company Live Gamer to provide the virtual goods platform for the game Company of Heroes Online.

AFK's app makes it possible for gamers to send in-game messages to friends from their mobile phones. Basically, though online games typically have to be accessed from a laptop/desktop, the AFK app makes the chat functions of games compeltely mobile. The company is predicting with the rise of app's like World of Warcraft's Auction House for iPhone, MMOs will look for new ways to detach functions from the gaming environment so users can have access from anywhere. Interesting marketing opportunity: where in-game advertising may have been awkward, advertising on top of game services (such as chat) may be more palatable.

Of note: 80% of ppl 18-49 play mobile games, compared to 50% playing console games. Also, the average mobile player is 28 yrs, compared to 34 for the avg console gamer.

Live video as a popular entertainment channel for gamers

"Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix, which develops social games for major motion pictures like The Hunger Games, said the in-game ad market presents both huge opportunities and new risks for brands and agencies. He cited statistics from NPD and said that there are almost 200 million online gamers out there who play games for an average of 13 hours a week. Yet, the majority of ad spend still goes to TV or banner ads and only a fraction to games, he noted. "How are we going to close that gap?" he asked. The discussion was organized by SponsorPay, a Berlin-based engagement advertising company whose application rewards users that watch an ad with virtual currency and other goodies. SponsorPay is one of a handful of companies out there including SocialVibe, Flurry and WildTangent seeking to help games developers monetize their product and brand advertisers engage consumers with such ads. Games entrepreneur Wilson Kriegel, formerly with Zynga, addressed this potential by discussing his involvement with mega-hit Draw Something, an online drawing game developed at his former company OMGPop, which Zynga acquired in March. The game allows people to draw things and share them with their friends. Since its launch early in 2012, it has seen over 90 million installs, 10 billion drawings created and was a top trending topic on Twitter.  Companies including McDonald's, Disney and Sprint have incorporated their ads into the game. Kriegel said that ad features including in-game banners, game features and in-game call to actions seen a clickthrough rate of 1 percent to 10 percent-unheard of in an industry where average CTRs are 0.7 percent."

Connection between screen resolution and quantity of in-app purchases.

The company has now debuted Clips, a feature that lets website viewers quickly and easily clip a 30-second portion video from others' live streams.

unlock bonus content for angry birds space by going through walmart's angry birds products -- toys, snacks, and clothes

Gaikai (an OnLive competitor) wants to put its app on Facebook, making it possible to stream and play PC/console games from FB.

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