When Square Enix and PopCap Games combined their strengths to create a new game, the result was Gyromancer. The puzzle RPG was announced in TGS 2009 back in September and redefined the tried, tested, and often cloned Bejeweled. But what we didn't know was that there were other games on that negotiating table - among them, Zuma and Peggle.

A study, commissioned by PopCap Games, showed that women love a good game of Cake Mania, and they aren't shy about it. After media content providers were determined to deliver advertisements catering to the young male bracket on consoles, the study by Information Solutions Group (ISG) reveals that casual gamers are "predominantly female."

Looking for numbers? Try 76% casual gamers that are female against 24% male casual gamers. And even over at Yahoo! Games and Electronic Arts casual gaming bet Pogo, more casual gamers are female.

The non-gamer bracket that included your girlfriend and your grandmother is now blessed with a gamers' edge on Zuma, thanks to the simplistic, yet entertaining casual game. With Miyamoto's previous speech on catering the Nintendo Wii to women, it's now clear that introducing games to the female bracket shows just how big of a market the game industry can tap into.

The games women play may not be "hardcore," but it's a start for toning hand-eye coordination technique and basic game mechanics. Females are entering the mainstream gaming scene, and not as promo girls on the side (mind you).

Even if the hardcore gamers are predominantly male, it's no indication that it should stay that way. There are already girl gamers around in the professional gaming scene, and it won't be a surprise if that increased this year, too.

One such study back in 2006 highlighted that 42% of adult console gamers were female, and the rest were male. In a broader scale, PC and console games were played by more males than females: 62% against 38%. So in essence, the gaming demographics is becoming more evenly distributed as time rolls on.

And with the success of the Nintendo Wii and MMO games, this year could spell the game industry's renewed focus on delivering games to gamers, and not games to males only.

Joel Durnham of extremetech.com informs that in a panel discussion at the Game Developer's Conference 2007, the idea of PC game viability was discussed by a quintet of industry folks that include: Xbox Live Arcade's David Edery, Electronic Arts' Richard Hilleman, Firaxis' Soren Johnson, Epic Games' Michael Capps, and Obsidian Entertainment's Chris Avallone.

As well as the usual PC gaming competing with console gaming debate that's been ongoing for years now, the effect of piracy on the PC gaming market was discussed. Capps in particular notes that PC Gaming is really falling apart and even though it "killed" them to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, Epic had to do it.

The reason for going multiplatform, of course, is piracy. Big AAA titles usually get stolen and, as Capps says, the market that would buy a US$ 600 video card also knows how BitTorrent works.

The future of gaming on the PC so far looks like it is set to be dominated by "casual" games and MMOs. Of course there's nothing casual about most casual games since the average Chuzzle/Zuma addict plays for 24 hours a week. MMOs are notable since they can't be pirated - unless of course you steal the source code and run your own illegal server. However, those things are easier to monitor than burned CDs.

They also covered the fact that user-generated game content could be big for the PC since console manufacturers try to wield more control over their products.

They end the discussion by noting that even though things look grim, AAA titles might never die on the PC, and that trends are ultimately hard to predict.

Oh well, so much for the good old days.

Playing scrabble bring back a lot of childhood memories for us, and while some of 'em are pretty stupid (Zork is NOT a word, lol), we like to kick back and enjoy the good times this game provided us when we needed a quiet time off from the gaming world...or during the last major power failure.

FUN Technologies just announced that Scrabble cubes is now available for play over at the WorldWinner site since yesterday, which also hosts old faves like Zuma, Bejeweled and Luxor.

This 3-d adaptation of the traditional board game features an ever-changing 3d cube on which players must connect letters to form as many words as possible, with features like “double word score” adapted from the original game. Expect the game to pop up next year at the following sites: GSN.com, AOL Games, MSN Games, Pogo, Real Networks and Virgin Games