Social gaming takes off – everyone says so

There’s been a lot of coverage in the past few days about the success and growth of social gaming. Some highlights:

• The FT reports that Facebook is the most popular gaming destination in the world with 200 million active gamrs (I assume this means monthly). Zynga‘s Texas HoldEm Poker and Playfish‘s Pet Society are the most popular games. The FT says that Facebook is not charging players for gamers but …
• Zynga is making $50-60 million a year in revenue from microtransactions, according to Venturebeat.
• InsideSocialGames reports on the Flash Gaming Summit, pointing that in-game ads are rarely enough to make money for a developer – you need to own the portal; and conversion rates are low: 3-4% of active players will become paying players, although ARPU can be as high as $125.
• TechCrunch reports that domestic Chinese companies are beating the likes of MySpace and Facebook into the ground, with revenue models based on micro-transactions. One company, TenCent, is generating over $1 billion a year.