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August 14-15 2006

Developing Casual Games for MSN Messenger

Benjamin EllingerMSN Messenger GDK Program ManagerMicrosoft Casual Games

August 14-15 2006

MCG? What Do You Guys Do?

Microsoft Casual Games

MSN Messenger Games

MSN Games

Mobile Games

Xbox Live Arcade

Emerging Platforms

August 14-15 2006

Messenger Has Games?

Single-player games (shared score)

Bejeweled, Mozaki Blocks, Hexic, Zuma

Multiplayer games

Classic games: Chess, Checkers, Tic-Tac-Toe, Backgammon, Reversi, Billiards

Original games: Quarto, Seven Hand Poker, Wheel of Fortune, Minesweeper

Sponsored games: Name That Tune

Coming soon: UNO, Sudoku, Jigsaw, Luxor

August 14-15 2006

How Many Players?

Overall MSN Messenger users

250+ million

Growing very rapidly

Total MSN Messenger game players

15 million UUs per month

More than MSN Games

More than Xbox 360

Potential of 30 to 50 million players

August 14-15 2006

Who Are These People?

A very international crowd

Only 20% in the USA

Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia all have large numbers

A typical user

Female

Teenager

With broadband

August 14-15 2006

Will They Give Me Money?

Subscription Games

$15 per year

$5 per month

Tends to be USA players

Ad Revenue

Ads are shown before every game

Usually high-end advertisers (car companies, drug companies, movies, etc.)

One of the easiest ways to get a massive international audience

August 14-15 2006

Can I Make a Messenger Game?

Business questions?

For questions about publishing on MSN Messenger, email mcg@microsoft.com

Technical requirements

Games are embedded in a Web page

Flash games

ActiveX controls

Sorry, no Java

August 14-15 2006

Will You Help Me?

MSN Messenger GDK

Full documentation

Sophisticated test page

Sample game (Tic-Tac-Toe)

How do I get it?

Access to GDK requires a distribution deal

Email mcg@microsoft.com

August 14-15 2006

Hey, That’s Easy…

Things that can go wrong

The audience is super-casual

The user interface must be very slick

The games are in a social environment

Many players have very low-performance machines and Internet connections

Localization is harder than you think

Flash is harder to master than you think

August 14-15 2006

How Could It Be Any Better?

Messenger growth

30% average yearly growth in users

Revenue share on subscriptions and ads

More localization

Long-term plans

More than two players

Larger Selection of Games

Live Anywhere

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.This presentation is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary.

DirectX Developer Centerhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/directx

Game Development MSDN Forumshttp://forums.microsoft.com/msdn

Xbox 360 Centralhttp://xds.xbox.com/

XNA Web sitehttp://www.microsoft.com/xna

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