Yahoo to offer free ad-supported games

Yahoo has announced that it will be offering ad-subsidized versions of popular casual games for download, and anticipates as many as 400 will be available by the end of the year.

Yahoo Games prominently features games with unlimited free trial versions as well as for-pay downloads. Today, the company announced it will be adding free, ad-supported versions of those downloads.

The company expects more than 400 ad-supported games by the end of the year, coming from Alawar Entertainment, Anarchy, Big Fish Games, eGames, Floodgate, Freeze Tag, FreshGames, Funkitron, Gogii Games, GameHouse, Gamemill Publishing, HipSoft, I-Play, iWin, Last Day of Work, Legacy Interactive, Ludia, MumboJumbo, pixelStorm, PlayFirst, Playrix Entertainment, PopCap, Reflexive Entertainment, Sandlot Games, Sugar Games, TellTale Games, TikGames, uclick, Worldwide Biggies and Zero G Games.

These games will feature pre-, mid-, and post-roll advertisement delivered by ad company NeoEdge, and served on the fusion.runtime technology from Double Fusion.

In other areas of ad-supported gaming, EA, which has been testing the model on its Battlefield franchise with the Pixar-inspired Battlefield Heroes, is also expected to launch its game before the summer is out.