Overall, 21 percent of the survey's 15,000 respondents spent an hour or more playing mobile games each day. But the report's most surprising finding may be that 27 of percent of women over 30 spend three hours or more per day playing mobile games - double the rate for both men and females ages 12 to 29.

"The fact that people are gaming on their mobile phones at home, often sitting a few feet away from their controller, shows that mobile is capable of grabbing and holding their interest. This data makes it clear that mobile is a viable alternative to console and PC gaming," Justin Siegel, CEO of MocoSpace, said in a statement.

The study also shows mobile games are more popular than console games with casual gamers who play games less than three hours per day.

According to the survey data, these 63 million iOS gamers downloaded an average of 2.5 games per month. The percentage of iPhone owners who play iOS game is between 50 and 75%, and based on the number of gamers playing on iOS devices, it looks as though the iPad alone has started to unseat those devices particularly aimed at gaming, such as the Playstation Portable.

But it isn't just a matter of more iOS gamers and more iOS game downloads. According to the survey data, games are also seeing an increase in in-game spending, something Distimo describes as a "must-have feature for game developers." Although approximately 88% of the top 300 iOS games are available for free, in-game purchases - within both free and paid games - generate approximately two-fifths of total gaming revenues. It accounts for aboutu 40% for the total revenue for iPhone and 32% for iPad.

The release of today's survey data by Distimo and Newzoo coincides with their partnership which will provide a detailed monthly data service, including download volumes and value for the top ranking games in the App Store.

We were able to give the app a try before launch. While it's great to be able to play these games on the iPad now and while iSwifter's application is quite well designed, it's hard not to notice that the apps don't play directly on the iPad. As with many remote desktop apps, there is often a slight delay between clicks and you can easily notice how the app sometimes struggles to refresh the screen fast enough.

For the most part, this doesn't really matter right now, as the available games tend to be puzzle games (Screw the Nut, Book of Treasures, etc.) that don't need a very fast screen refresh rate to be playable. This does, however, limit the platform's usefulness for more action-oriented games. Currently, the available games also don't need any keyboard input to be playable, but it remains to be seen how well iSwifter will be able to cope with more complex apps that rely on more complex commands than just a mouse click.

For now, iSwifter is only available for the iPad and only works over WiFi networks. The company plans to add support for 3G networks soon and launch iPhone and Android apps in the near future.

But there was an official announcement that dropped just days before the IPO: Games would start appearing in the main news feed.

Only one month before, Facebook began including games in the mobile news feed. If you're already feeling annoyed, remind yourself that this is nothing new. Remember when sponsored stories began appearing in the news feed?

In Zynga's IPO filing, it noted overreliance on Facebook. But it's not a one-way street here. Facebook & Zynga are intertwined, and at times it's nearly impossible to tell them apart.

In the risks section of Facebook's S-1, it explained that Zynga is responsible for about 12% of Facebook's revenue, and is also important in terms of direct advertising revenue and payments. Zynga is also the largest provider of Facebook games, accounting for 80% of Facebook Credits revenue.

Adding Zynga games to the Facebook news feed isn't the only change that Facebook announced on Monday, January 30. Games will also appear as a Timeline unit so that you will be able to see your own and other peoples' gaming achievements. There is now an app request on the main site, too. If you want to view game activity as its own news feed, you can do that to - just select the friend activity news feed under Apps and Games. Games.com's Joe Osborne notes that this news feed is similar to the Google+ Games Stream, as the two continue competing for gamers' eyeballs, time and money.

Facebook relies on Zynga apps for revenue. The Facebook news feed is one of the most heavily trafficked and viewed aspects of the entire social network. If Facebook wants to keep Zynga happy, why wouldn't it include games in the main news feed? Besides, games are already popping up in the mobile news feed. It was only a matter of time before games began appearing on the main site news feed.

If that sounds like a bum deal to you, that's because it really is. Compared to Major League Baseball, a pioneer in online sports streaming, the NFL package sounds just awful. As a New York Yankees fan living outside of their local market, I rely on baseball's MLB.TV service to keep tabs on my favorite team. With MLB.TV for under $100 per season I can watch any out of market game streamed live, or watch full archives of completed games for the entire season, including edited/condensed games which show only the outcome of every at bat.

On the otherhand, because of the NFL's exclusive $700+ million per year deal with DirecTV (which runs through 2010) I have to be a subscriber to the satellite service to get access to out of market games. The cost is more than 3 times that of MLB.TV, and the service requires that I have a Windows machine and run IE. Yuck.

Compared to other major North American sports leagues the NFL has been the most protective of its online video (the NBA even has a YouTube channel, for example, while the NFL doesn't allow any outside site to show game clips of more than 45 seconds and requires that they are removed within 24 hours), and their exclusive deal with DirecTV has more or less crippled their ability to offer a compelling online video package.

Update: I just thought of another reason this service seems like a bad idea: if you're already paying for the TV package, why do you even need the online service? I guess, maybe, to watch it at work... but who really works on Sundays (when all out of market games would be played -- Monday and late-season Saturday or holiday games are nationally televised)? It just doesn't make sense. If anyone is considering paying for this service, please let us know in the comments why it appeals to you.

The app itself is free, and after a 7-day free trial, will require a monthly subscription fee of $4.99.

According to iSwifter founder Rajat Gupta, "We have spent the last year building a cloud-based Flash browser technology that provides low latency interactivity and high frame rate rendering for an optimal user experience." And that user experience will be key, particularly for gameplay.

By creating this app, iSwifter says it will save game developers the time of having to port their Flash games to iPad. But it will also open up the wealth of Flash-based games to iPad users. Mobile gaming is skyrocketing in popularity, and as we wrote last month, iOS users are particularly voracious when it comes to their gaming habits, downloading some 5 million games per day.

Facebook has also updated the bookmarks counter on the left rail. Once a user clicks on the notification, it will clear. Previously, these counters would only clear after the request expired or the developer deleted it.

The current iteration of the Facebook news feed gives users two options: sort by highlighted stories first or sort by recent stories first.

Among the other news feed noise, Facebook recently added sponsored stories to the news ticker.

Earlier this week, Facebook told us that come 2012, sponsored stories would start showing up in the news feed.

Gamers who care about what their friends are playing will welcome this new information in the news feed. For everyone else, it'll just be another story to hide.

Among people who own an iPad or other tablet computer, many of them are engaging with other, older forms of media less than they used to, according to a new study by GfK MRI. Unsurprisingly, printed books, newspapers and magazines are being read less by tablet owners, who now have a wealth of new digital sources of news, magazine content and eBooks.

Taking an even bigger hit than all of the above, however, are video game consoles. Fifty-nine percent of tablet owners said they use gaming consoles like the XBox 360, Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation less frequently than they used to. Instead, they're playing more games on their tablets.

Although the iPad and other emerging platforms don't quite have the same selection of video games offered on more traditional consoles, they've given birth to whole new generation of mobile games, from the simple, yet addictive Angry Birds to more complex, immersive games akin to something you'd see on an established console platform. Of the top twenty most popular paid iPad apps in the iTunes App Store, half of them are games, three of which are different versions of Angry Birds.

This trend toward tablet-based gaming, reading and Web browsing is only beginning. The first iPad was only launched last year, with the second one coming out in 2011, to much success. In November, Amazon will start shipping its own tablet, which is less than half the cost of the iPad and is designed specifically for purchasing and consuming books, video, news, magazines and games.

The possible customizations of your games with your social network data include a personal play-list for Rock Band, personalizing team-members in Madden NFL to looking like friends and decorating Grand Theft Auto billboards and logos to reflect your "Likes."

In addition to leveraging the Facebook API for more rewarding gameplay and better access to players' pocketbooks, the integration also benefits Facebook. Even as Facebook's premier game developer, Zynga, has sought ways to extend its games off the Facebook platform, Facebook is seeking to do the same.

This is an integration a power of magnitude greater than the previous simple ability to publish your in-game scores or other achievements to your Facebook account. Although 200 million people already play Facebook games, it also allows Facebook to enter the realm of AAA games, what the hordes of hardcore gamers consider "real games." Not only is there prestige involved, access to non-casual gaming is access to a $20 billion industry.

Tip via Digital Trends | Playstation photo by William Hook

How it works: in this particular game you can choose to play the role of any of 4 different players: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, a Market Analyst. Then you can either predict what will happen, or voice your opinion about what should happen. Or both. If for example you choose to play as Google, you can predict that Google will open up the languages beyond Python. If you voice an opinion, you are guided by several "advisors" - in this case we have RWW, CNET and Dave Winer. The difference between predicting and voicing an opinion is that you may not necessarily agree with what you predict Google will do, so you can then cast your opinion about what you think Google ought to do!

This is the first in a series of games that we'll run over the next few months on ReadWriteWeb. If you have ideas for other games, please let us know in the comments below.

Disclosure: one of our writers, Sean Ammirati, is on the Impact Games advisory board.

All platforms allow developers to create games for PCs, Macs, Nintendo Wiis, and iPhones. The free version, formerly known as Unity Indie, was previously priced at $199. Broke and/or stingy devs are welcomed to download the platform here. The pro version of Unity's platform will continue to sell for around $1,500.

In a statement released today, CEO David Helgason said, "With the explosive growth in new platforms and performance improvement in our Unity suite of products, we believe that there are no technical hurdles remaining for high quality interactive content everywhere.

"Now we are removing financial hurdles as well. Unity is mature enough and easy enough to use that it can be the entry point for those developers taking their first steps with the technology."

With the 2.6 release of the platform, Unity provides full support for external versioning tools such as Subversion, Perforce, or any other version control system. Unity has also added Visual Studio integration and can automatically sync a VS project to source code so all scripts are in the solution and IntelliSense is configured.

Today, Google announced the launch of Google AdSense for Games, a flavor of AdSense built on Google's AdScape Media acquisition that allows advertisers and content producers to place ads within the content of online games.

But, that's a familiar position for Google.

The service, currently in beta, offers a variety of traditional AdSense ad units:

"As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue. You'll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over."

What's more, there are already a number of well-known companies participating, like Konami, mochimedia, and Zynga, which took on an additional $29 million in funding in July. Titles highlighted include Dance Dance Revolution, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Karaoke Revolution to name a few.

But just how well integrated are the ads? Google has provided the following demonstration of the service in action:

Content providers who are interested in participating in the program may apply if they have a minimum of 500,000 game plays with 80% of their traffic from the U.S. or the U.K.

Entering a market where Yahoo! and Microsoft already have a firm foothold is not out of character for Google. Nor is succeeding with that strategy. Clearly, it's a position from which they've managed to win, time and time again. It will be interesting to see if Google's series of come-from-behind victories remains consistent in the world of online gaming.

To keep up with the changing times, the new National Geographic Games division (NGG), will attempt to connect with people once again on the platforms of our modern age, including the Wii, Playstation 3, Nintendo DS, PC and Mac, the PS3 Network, and the iPhone. There will also be free Flash games online at nationalgeographic.com/channel. As always, the company's goal is to encourage people to explore their world, this time though, it's through play.

Lest you think these games will be wimpy attempts at educational experiences, it's worth nothing that Chris Mate, a former executive at Take2 Interactive, the company behind "Grand Theft Auto," will serve as VP and GM of the games venture. Hopefully, his history, which also includes Bethesda Softworks, will bring some spunk to the usually dry "learning is fun!" gaming experience.

The first game to launch will be "Herod's Lost Tomb," an online game which blends in content from both the December 2008 issue of National Geographic magazine as well as the National Geographic Channel feature broadcast on the biblical figure King Herod, architect of the ancient world.

Chuzzle goes on sale beginning tomorrow and Plants vs Zombies for Android will be available later in the month. The games will be free for the first day of their release, after which they'll be available to purchase for $2.99 each.

The Amazon Appstore's exclusivity will only last two weeks, after which time the games will be available elsewhere, presumably via the Android Market.

Since then, the Amazon Appstore has offered a free app every day, in an attempt to get Android users to use its curated store rather than the official Android Market.

But not everyone has been pleased with the new Amazon store. The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) issued a warning to mobile app developers saying that it had "significant concerns" about the distribution terms, pricing policies and discounting practices that Amazon uses.

No doubt, with a well-known game like Plants vs Zombies, PopCap's concerns might be different than indie game developers. PopCap Games contends that by making its games available via the Amazon Appstore, it will help extend its reach to new customers and gaming fans. "Our relationship with Amazon is pivotal to PopCap's overall strategy in bringing a growing roster of mobile titles to the ever-widening base of smartphone users," says Giordano Bruno Contestabile, PopCap's senior director of global product and business strategy for mobile.

By having this sort of popular and exclusive gaming content in its Appstore, Amazon is also showing a strong business strategy for getting Android users to buy their apps there.

Following weather apps, there comes Facebook. The app earned second place with 25% of users reporting they accessed the Facebook iPhone app regularly. It's possible that it won't be too long before Facebook beats out weather for first place, though. The application is growing in popularity, adding nearly 1 million active users per month, and is at 30 million actives worldwide. It was also recently recognized by Apple as the #1 All Time Free App in the iPhone app store.

Next, after Facebook, comes the games. 20% of iPhone users reported games as the apps they used the most often. 10% reported music-related apps, and then the apps that followed dropped down to single-digit percentages.

What may be most interesting about this study, though, is that it found people are seeking out apps for download by themselves instead of relying on recommendations from family and friends. According to the report, 60% of both iPhone and other smartphone users said they found the apps they wanted to download on their own. "It's surprising to see people actually spending time to self-discover," said Danielle Nohe, director of telecom and media-related research for Compete. That just goes to show these modern-day smartphones are really personal computers after all, aren't they?