Online gaming is up 22 percent in May, retail games down

Over 87 million visitors hit online gaming sites in May, which is up 22 percent from last year. Where are they playing? Sites like EA Online and Nickelodeon Casual Games, or the biggest, Yahoo! Games, which saw 19.4 million visitors in May.

“Online gaming continues to be one of the top gaining categories over the past year, growing at ten times the rate of the total US internet population and reaching nearly one out of every two internet users,” said Edward Hunter, comScore, publisher of this data.

Is this the future? Online-only games? It’s too early to call, but the NPD data for May shows that people were less interested in boxed games that month, perhaps due to their higher cost when compared to the multitude of free online games. Edge reminds that sales of retail games were down 17 percent for the month.