SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Conduit, the company enabling publishers to distribute their offering directly and through its global network of publishers, has announced the availability of new APIs for the creation of “mini-games” that can be played directly in the chrome of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

Conduit is the first to enable this highly engaging method of game play, allowing users to play constantly no matter where they are on the Internet.

According to the NPD Group, in their report “Online Gaming 2010,” games are one of the most addictive and popular activities online; the average number of hours spent each week on online gaming has increased by 10 percent in 2009 and now almost half of internet users regularly consume game-related content as part of their browsing routine. Conduit is now offering a new and engaging way for these publishers to reach this influx of new and established gamers.

“This is a whole new way to play games that offers unprecedented opportunities for game developers to constantly engage users,” said Adam Boyden, president of Conduit. “Game developers can benefit from distribution to our huge network, while our web publishers can offer their users highly-engaging apps as part of their branded offering.”

Game developers that leveraged the technology in a beta release have already reported impressive results; for example, baconOppenheim, which developed PiTSi, a virtual pet game, acquired nearly 4 million users since its launch in the Conduit Marketplace.

The new APIs enable entire games to be built using any of the major web standards – like Flash, Silverlight, Java, HTML, and more – and include rich features such as user log-in, virtual currency, and social elements like Facebook account data, and more. Mini games can also interact with other objects and events on the browser page.