A recent report by Screen Digest titled “Western World MMOG Market: 2006 Review and Forecasts to 2011″ has produced some bold predictions for one of the fastest growing segments in gaming. Some of the findings are obvious (World of WarCraft is the most popular subscription game), while some of the breakdowns are more interesting (the European market, particularly France, will grow faster than North American market over the next five years).

While the report states that 87 percent of MMO revenue is generated through subscriptions, new business models that rely on virtual item sales and in-game advertising are on the rise. New business models and new customers that aren’t traditional gamers will be a continuing trend through 2011. The report’s author, Piers Harding-Rolls, says, “During the past few years the Western landscape for massively multiplayer online games has become increasingly fragmented following the introduction of new genres of games including social networking, virtual pet rearing and virtual world building titles. These new games and platforms have brought with them many new gamers and also new business models that are generating revenue that is largely incremental to the incumbent subscription business.”

The full report consists of 76 pages and 82 charts. It is available in print and PDF format, costing $2,045 for the former and $4,090 for the latter. Here are some of its key findings: More

Kongregate.com is pitching itself as “video games meet YouTube.” YouGame? Whatever the game, the company recently raised one million in venture funding for their ad-supported site. So does Kongregate live up to its ambitions, or did someone use a buzz word (read: YouTube) to raise some Silicon Valley money?

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Player X, a mobile media company, and Sky, UK based entertainment company, have partnered to produce Carol Vorderman’s Mind Aerobics. That may not be all that interesting on its own, but, according to Mobile Industry, the fact that the company has allotted a six-figure marketing budget to the game may be a touch more intriguing. So, what is Mind Aerobics and why exactly should anyone care enough about it to spend that much money? More

Dick McVengeance (which I’m pretty sure is not his Christian name) of Japanator reports that an MMO based on Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball anime series is set to hit Japan in 2008. He sources an article on DBMania, which is written in Japanese. Dragon Ball (along with its sequels Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT) is one of the most globally popular anime and manga series of all time. The series revolves around an aloof, but powerful warrior named Goku, who finds himself wrapped up in outlandish adventures filled with exaggerated hand-to-hand combat. The game is being developed by Ntl Inc., with contributions from Toriyama-san himself.

No matter the quality of the game, an MMO based on Dragon Ball is sure to be a hot commodity. It’s such an enormous franchise that a degree of success is guaranteed. This is particularly true in the Asian market, where numerous MMOs that are not as popular in the West garner millions of users (see Ragnarok, MapleStory). That said, the game is likely to popular among Western gamers too, where the Dragon Ball Z fighting games have sold millions of copies. More

How do you make a game viral? Gamasutra, gaming industry business website, has published a new article today on five ways to market a game more, er, virally. Jon Radoff, creator of Space Empire Elite, gives a few pointers on how to gain a following and continue to grow that following after inception. In these tips, there’s a glimpse of how, if successfully marketed, a small, unknown game can become a hit. More

Cellufun, mobile game developer and gateway, received $3 million in funding from Longsworth Venture Partners. With this new funding, Cellufun is planning to further develop their offerings for the mobile market. Can the market support another gaming portal? With a bit of creativity and interesting products, absolutely. More

That’s the word from the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, reporting on FlowPlay, a Seattle-based startup from Derrick Morton, formerly an exec with RealNetworks. Aiming for a public launch in June, FlowPlay is described as a virtual world centered around casual games. The PI’s John Cook notes that Philip Rosedale is also an alum of Real— he was CTO in its dot com heyday, before going on to found Linden Lab/Second Life. The implication is that this new startup will be playing in the same space, but not a thing about user-created content is mentioned in the PI article, so the analogy seems like a bit of a stretch. FlowPlay sounds less like Second Life, and more like a teen-oriented version of the enormously successful Puzzle Pirates from Three Rings. But that could be a very good thing.
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Electronic Arts, publishing giant, has acquired 19% of Neowiz, a South Korean game developer that they’ve been working with since early 2006. EA paid over $105 million to acquire a stake in the casual gaming company. This purchase can mean a lot for both companies, but it’s a definite in for EA to the Asian game market. More

Nexon America has announced that its inaugural MMO, MapleStory, has hit over three million registered users in North America. The game, developed by Wizet, is a side-scrolling action title that makes money for the company through microtransactions. It’s also proof that your game doesn’t have to be called World of Warcraft or Second Life to be an MMO success.

MapleStory is already a global phenomenon; John H. Chi, chief executive officer of Nexon America, claims that there are nearly 60 million registered users worldwide. Keep in mind that the game has been released in numerous territories since 2002 and only hit North America in November 2006. More

Electronic Arts, the mega-publisher behind the Madden and FIFA franchises, has opened a mobile portal for sports and gaming news. The new service currently offers RSS feeds for sports fans and a catalog of stuff to buy, such as ring tones, but what interests us is the promised future ability to challenge people to live games via the cell. If there’s one thing that could blow cell gaming wide open, it would be playing sports games with friends via an easy to navigate portal interface. More