A study, commissioned by PopCap Games, showed that women love a good game of Cake Mania, and they aren't shy about it. After media content providers were determined to deliver advertisements catering to the young male bracket on consoles, the study by Information Solutions Group (ISG) reveals that casual gamers are "predominantly female."

Looking for numbers? Try 76% casual gamers that are female against 24% male casual gamers. And even over at Yahoo! Games and Electronic Arts casual gaming bet Pogo, more casual gamers are female.

The non-gamer bracket that included your girlfriend and your grandmother is now blessed with a gamers' edge on Zuma, thanks to the simplistic, yet entertaining casual game. With Miyamoto's previous speech on catering the Nintendo Wii to women, it's now clear that introducing games to the female bracket shows just how big of a market the game industry can tap into.

The games women play may not be "hardcore," but it's a start for toning hand-eye coordination technique and basic game mechanics. Females are entering the mainstream gaming scene, and not as promo girls on the side (mind you).

Even if the hardcore gamers are predominantly male, it's no indication that it should stay that way. There are already girl gamers around in the professional gaming scene, and it won't be a surprise if that increased this year, too.

One such study back in 2006 highlighted that 42% of adult console gamers were female, and the rest were male. In a broader scale, PC and console games were played by more males than females: 62% against 38%. So in essence, the gaming demographics is becoming more evenly distributed as time rolls on.

And with the success of the Nintendo Wii and MMO games, this year could spell the game industry's renewed focus on delivering games to gamers, and not games to males only.

According to a new study released earlier this week by Nielsen Entertainment in their third annual Active Gamer Benchmark Study, women make up 64% of North America's 117 million online gamers - and we aren't lying. The study did not reveal any particular genre or game type that were being played by women, but it is expected that online browser games such as Zuma on various flash websites made up a large proportion of the female online gamers. Although many traditional online games such as Halo or CounterStrike were primarily aimed towards males, the rise of RPGs and large-scale online titles such as World of Warcraft appear to have attracted more female gamers to the online scene.

Another surprising result from the latest study is the amount of older gamers that are also interested in online gaming. As you'd expect, the teenage market dominates any other age group in numbers, but the study does say that more than 15 million gamers (about 8%) are actually at least 45 years old. The study involved 2,200 gamers described as "active" who were 13 years or older and owned a gaming device and played games at least once a week.

Whether you recognize it as the arcade game Puzz Loop's handheld version or the second coming of Zuma, Magnetica promises to be the perfect companion in the coming long summer trips.

This Nintendo DS game will see players using the touch screen to flick marbles one-by-one at an ever-growing spiral chain of marbles. Connecting three marbles of the same color will make the marbles vanish, which sometimes set-off a massive chain of reactions.

Single player modes in this game offer players bonus items that can slow or stop time or even reverse the course of marbles. There are 99 levels on four difficulty settings in the game's challenge mode. There are marble-stymieing obstacles like wind, water, switches, and multiple launchers to deal with as well. To win against your opponents in the two-player Versus mode, use weapons such as Ion Clouds (create smoke screens), Recoils (block an opponent's marbles), Black Holes (devour marbles), and Gravitons (alter the path of launched marbles).

Magnetica is rated E for Everybody and launches next week, June 5.

Magnetica, the puzzle game for DS, is a conversion of the 1998 arcade puzzle game Puzz Loop with added touch screen support. Some others might recognize it as the popular game Zuma. Either way looks like some fun is headed to Nintendo DS on June 5th as this title hits store shelves. The game modes include quest, challenge, check-mate and versus modes and support for DS download play will also be available. Go ahead and check out the thumbnails below to get a better picture of the new puzzle game before it's released.