The Casual Games Special Interest Group (SIG) of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) today announced an initiative to facilitate the sharing of sales and revenue information among developers, publishers, aggregators and distributors of casual video games. Led by James Gwertzman, director of Business Development at PopCap Games, the new Data Reporting Standards Initiative represents the first industry-wide effort to electronically share sales and revenue data among partners in the sector. Later phases of the initiative call for the aggregation and publishing of industry-level figures. In addition to PopCap, charter members of this new program include RealNetworks' Games division, Reflexive Entertainment, PlayFirst, Big Fish Games, and Oberon Media.

The first phase of the new Data Sharing Initiative is a standardized electronic data format which, when adopted, will save each respective company (and its sales and distribution partners) time and money by reducing the need for manual data entry and related delays in delivering this data to their partners. At a later stage, aggregated data will make it possible for the first time to create accurate industry-wide "Top 100" sales charts measuring the growth and success of new titles in the casual games marketplace. Companies have already begun adapting the new report, with Reflexive Entertainment being the first company to send out reports in the new standardized format.

The program is open to all developers, publishers, aggregators, distributors and resellers in the casual games sector. More details of the initiative can be found at www.igda.org/casual .