"Casual" gaming, which involves relatively simple and quick video games that target a mass audience, have been around for a good long time (remember "Soliatire" and "Minesweeper"?). But a recent surge in the interest surrounding the companies that produce this software is being attributed to the huge popularity of Nintendo of America Inc.'s Wii game system, with its easy-to-use remote control that uses the motions of the person playing the game to control gameplay wirelessly.

At the iHollywood Forum's VCDemo Tuesday afternoon,  one startup — PlayMotion Inc. — was singled out as a big benefactor of Wii's popularity. The four-year-old company, which develops projection systems that enable people to interact with games or virtual images that can be projected onto any surface, drew some skepticism from a panel of venture capitalists who were judging co-founder Scott Wills' five-minute business pitch.

"It's not something we're ever interested in," said Alexander Marquez, a director at Intel Capital. "You do have the benefit of riding the wave behind the Wii of gesture recognition gaming."

Granite Ventures principal Chris McKay was equally skeptical. "I'd have a lot of questions" before deciding to invest in the startup, he said. But Wills and his team might not need to worry too much about what VCs think. PlayMotion has reached cash-flow-breakeven on current annual revenues of $1.5 million after raising only  $400,000 in financial backing. —Olaf de Senerpont Domis

See Tech Confidential's previous posts on VCDemo
See related casual gaming post from Tech Confidential
See post from GigaOm

Tags: nintendo, games, VCDemo, vc, venture+capital, web 2.0