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Games - Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Casual Game Site PlayFirst Raises $5M

San Francisco-based PlayFirst has raised $5M led by Rustic Canyon Partners with existing investors Mayfield Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures. PlayFirst has published seven games for the casual market, where consumers download games from web sites for free trial and then have the option to buy them. Its biggest hit is "Diner Dash," which has sold more than 200,000 copies.

The company's President & CEO John Welch spent five years at AtomShockwave as VP of Games and Product.

From the a:c's perspective, the casual games market is a bright-spot in gaming, however, competition is killing the try and buy business model and we expect that the buy part of the equation will no longer exist as gaming will become fully ad-supported.

PlayFirst competes with:
GameHouse
Garage Games
Oberon Media
PopCap
Reflexive

Read - PlayFirst Raises $5 Million In Venture Capital As Casual Games Market Gathers Momentum (SJ Mercury)
Read - Casual Games White Paper (IGDA)