Spil Games now the world's largest casual game portal network!

Yesterday I was in Beijing and did not find the time to blog about this when it was announced to the press, but Spil Games is now the world’s largest casual game portal worldwide. From the number 5 position one year ago, Spil Games now passed among others Yahoo Games and MSN Games to finish number 1 at the end of 2008. I am very proud to be part of the Spil Games team and of the dedication and hard work of all Spil’s employees to reach this major milestone!

The official press release:

SPIL GAMES, the world’s ultimate online game destination, confirmed today that it has become the largest casual game portal network worldwide based on results from the latest comScore Media Metrix assessment. According to recent reports, SPIL GAMES’ worldwide traffic grew 75% in 2008, bringing its casual game portal network worldwide ranking from the #5 position in early 2008 to the #1 position at close of the year. SPIL GAMES surpassed other top online game portals as the leading dedicated destination network for casual games. SPIL GAMES also reports a 269% increase in traffic in the United States as well as a global revenue growth of 125% in 2008.

“We are particularly proud of reaching the number one ranking in casual game portal networks worldwide. SPIL GAMES is a stand-alone, fully-dedicated and independent portal network, while competitors like Yahoo! Games and MSN Games are general portals with a channel for casual games. And, over the last year, we’ve been dedicated to growing our audience through a strategy focused on providing quality, fun-to-play, localized, and segmented portals,” said Peter Driessen, CEO of SPIL GAMES.

In addition to substantial traffic growth in the United States, SPIL GAMES saw increases in traffic in many other territories in its network of casual game portals last year: year-over-year traffic grew 113% in the United Kingdom, 52% in France, and 19% in Germany. In addition, SPIL GAMES finished the fourth quarter of 2008 with stronger-than-ever revenues. While the greatest concentrations of advertising revenue stream from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and France, SPIL GAMES works closely with advertising partners all around the world to develop advertising solutions and provide advergame seeding that reaches specific segments on its portals, making it not only the ultimate online destination for gamers, but for advertisers seeking the captivated attention of this valuable market as well.

For more information about SPIL GAMES, visit www.spilgames.com.

Spring in Holland

The past 3 days I spent in Amsterdam and Hilversum, mainly for business meetings at Spil Games. It was a good trip, glad I took the time to fly back and forth from China. Spil Games is doing very well despite the recession, and with the addition of some new key people in the management this will only get better. Expect to hear a lot more about Spil’s successes soon, this is just the beginning!

The weather was not that great, quite cold with occasionally some rain, but today the weather was suddenly very nice. Early this morning it was still freezing, during a run at dawn with my dad the rain puddles in the woods were still covered with ice. But once the sun climbed higher the temperature went up as well and now the weather is gorgeous. And the flowers also seem to like it, because today suddenly the flowers in my parents garden started to bloom!

Huangpu river tunnels

It’s not easy to explain to people outside China how quickly Chinese can do things. In Shanghai I have seen roads being built in a few days and buildings going up in a matter of months instead of years. Many people don’t believe it until they visit Shanghai and feel the vibe of this city and the work ethos of the people. Here things happen instead of that people just talk about them.

Today’s paper version of the Shanghai Daily had a great example of this. It published an article about a new tunnel that is currently being constructed under the Huangpu river, and they reported that the tunneling machines broke through to the other side this weekend. The Renmin Road tunnel will have two passages of each 2470 meters long and will be finished in the 4th quarter of this year. I have to admit that I don’t know a single thing about construction, let alone about tunnel construction, but building a 2.5 km tunnel (or actually 2 tunnels) within 9 months after drilling to the other side of the river seems awfully fast to me.

But that’s not all, because the article matter-of-factly ends with the sentence: “Currently 7 tunnels are under construction and they are all due to open before the World Expo 2010”. Seven new tunnels – and all to be finished in just over a year. That could only happen in China!