Almost half of the U.S. wireless subscribers now own phones capable of downloading games, and 27% of those (or 13.5% of the total population) play games (premium, free or demo) on their phones. This is up from 20% of those with game capable handsets last year.
The NPD Group invited a balanced group of teens […]

Are you participating in that conference call or are you typing emails and talking with officemates? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has proposed a piece of software that can answer this question for others. The “Jerk-O-Meter” measures the stress levels in your voice and rates you between 0 and 100 to let you know how annoying you are being and your interest level in the conversation.

A new research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore finds no evidence of a strong link between video game violence and aggressive behavior in players.

The study followed a “treatment” group of 75 people that had never played MMORPGs before and played Asheron’s Call 2 for the first time in the study and a control group of 138, who did not play the game. The only flaw that we initially see in reading the summaries is that the partipants, with ages from 14 to 68, were solicited through online message boards which may limit the personality types much more than a true random sample.

“According to Ziff Davis Media’s annual “Digital Gaming in America” survey of more than 1,500 randomly selected U.S. households, nearly a quarter of all video game players watched less television than last year and expect to cut their viewing time even further this year. The study also showed that 76.2 million people in the United States play videogames, up from 67.5 million a year ago, representing an increase of 11.4%. The increase in gaming follows strong sales of portable gaming systems and reductions in the prices of current-generation video game consoles.”

The IGDA’s Casual Games SIG has just released 2005 Casual Games White Paper (2MB, 125 page pdf).
The White Paper is the work of over 30 volunteers in the casual games space, and the list of contributors reads almost like a who’s who of the industry including; AOL, TryMedia, Skunk Studios, Large Animal, Pogo, Shockwave, […]

China’s mobile phone gaming market is forecasted to be worth RMB 5.8 billion (US$714 million) by 2008, increasing by seven times from its 2004 value, according to market research firm Analysys.

The mobile gaming market is projected to expand with the introduction of 3G mobile technology in China.

China’s has over 363 million mobile phone users, according to statistics released at the end of June by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

The rapid development of online gaming is also a driving factor leading to the rising popularity of mobile phone gaming.

Research from the automobile industry and various technology companies have shown for years that holding and talking on a cell phone is no more distracting than other activities drivers participate in while driving. Yet, lawmakers still pushed the point of banning hand-held phone usage while driving as it “played” well in the media. […]