_____ Developing Casual Games for MSN Messenger

Benjamin Ellinger MSN Messenger GDK Program Manager Microsoft 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]

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

August 14-15 2006 _____ DirectX Developer Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx Game Development MSDN Forums http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn Xbox 360 Central http://xds.xbox.com/ XNA Web site http://www.microsoft.com/xna

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