Game Development and Web Delivery - the money part

Business and Project Management Discussions
#1

At JavaOne there was a presentation by Andrew Leker ( from Mind Control Software ) about web delivery of Java Games.

Just recently in Game Developer magazine a company that actually does this and makes money doing was featured - PopCap games.

I am very curious. How do these comapnies make their money. Their web site allows a person to play the games for free. You can download the full version for a nominal fee.

Also I have seen some of their games at larger, portal sites ( Yahoo, MyWay ). Can someone give me an indication of how this is handled from the business side?

Thanks!
Jim

#2

You need to look more carefully at their site - just try playing the games! It’s pretty obvious after your first three plays: you get frequent nags to “buy and download the full version; this is just the cut-down free version you are playing”.

So it’s classic shareware.

Although financial/news publications are calling it “modern” shareware “…for the internet age”. It is slightly different, in that these days a site like popcap could easily make 6 figure revenues from advertising (and IIRC make more than that from sales of the downloadable games already; I definitely read about their quarterly revenue somewhere recently, but not in GD)