Wolf Tracking

In case you haven’t heard, 2007 was the best year yet for the videogame industry, with nearly $18 billion in US sales – 43% better than last year’s total take. Even when less-than-rosy consumer sentiment produced disappointing holiday sales across the board, videogames moved at a steady clip, with nearly $5 billion worth of software and hardware sold in December alone.

While the numbers are certainly impressive, the most interesting part of this story is where that growth came from. While hardcore gamers came out in force to buy Halo3 and Gears of War this year, the Wii dominated sales all year long, and cemented Nintendo’s push for casual gamers as a sure-fire strategy.

Venerable Japanese developer Capcom and even EA recently pledged to investors that adults who would never consider themselves ‘gamers,’ spend only a few hours (or even minutes) playing games each week, and spend little, if any, money on hardware specifically to play games would be their new focus.

This is a particularly exciting trend for the game development community, because lo-fi, casual games are much easier and cheaper to build than a high-end release like this year’s Madden. Scrabulous was developed by a handful of coders in India, and now sees around half a million plays daily via Facebook.

For advertisers, the shift to casual gaming is an even bigger deal. These lower involvement games have plenty of space to insert logos, and bargain development prices mean one brand can “own” a game from very early in the process.

It’ll be interesting to see how casual-only studios answer the call for both casual gamers and serious advertisers. Keep an eye on Dave Jaffe’s Eat, Sleep, Play and Zynga, the latest venture from SupportSoft founder Mark Pincus and a group of top-notch investors, including PayPal superstar Peter Thiel.