• Reuters, Friday, July 11, 2008 12:45 PM

Yahoo on Thursday said that by year's end, it would offer more than 400 hundred downloadable casual games for free.

The games, which will come from such publishers as Anarchy Big Fish Games and Sugar, will have advertising integrated into them. In-game ad network operators Double Fusion and NeoEdge will sell and integrate ads into the expanded Yahoo Games portal.

So-called "casual games" are often simple puzzle or card games that are easy and quick to play, and have a short learning curve. Solitaire, Tetris and Bejeweled are classic examples; women between the ages of 35 and 54 tend to be the core demographic group for casual games. Yahoo said that providing advertisers with a platform to reach this coveted demographic was one of the main reasons for expanding its game offerings.

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