• by Masha Geller , May 21, 2002

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, online gaming sites attracted more than 28 million visitors in April 2002, reaching nearly 24% of the active Internet population. Interactive online gaming is one of the most popular entertainment categories and continues to grow.

During the month of April, MSN Gaming Zone drew nearly 7.2 million surfers at home and at work, edging out Yahoo! Games as the top ranked gaming site for the month. Yahoo! Games followed closely, attracting more than 6.2 million visitors last month. The Flipside Network rounded out the top three online gaming sites with more than four million visitors in April.

"In addition to offering gamers the ability to battle it out with other players online, these Web communities provide the latest news in game development, reviews of the latest releases and cheat codes to help gamers with their strategy," said T.S. Kelly, director and principal analyst at NetRatings.

"The critical component for higher uptake of multiplayer gaming online is wider deployment of broadband connections to the Internet. Broadband facilitates faster transmissions of the heavy data loads of real-time games," added Kelly.

"In April, high-speed Internet users grew 58 percent year-over-year to more than 25 million and online gaming sites as well as the interactive efforts from Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation should benefit from broadband's continued growth."

                       | Unique  | Time Per Person | 
         Site          |Audience |   (hh:mm:ss)    |

|  (000)  |                 | 
1. MSN Gaming Zone.com |  7,197  |     0:28:23     | 
2. Yahoo! Games        |  6,261  |     0:47:24     | 
3. Flipside Network    |  4,024  |     0:51:56     |

4. GameSpot            |  3,179  |     0:19:14     | 
5. Kraft Entertainment |  2,629  |     0:28:49     | 

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings