TechCrunch is reporting that Bionic Panda Games, a new Android-focused game developer, is making waves in the Android device game development field. The company chose Android not because of its position as a superior platform, but because it has the highest number of users.

Their first game, Aqua Pets, is similar to the countless fish raising games that were around even before Facebook. These things have been around since the days of Shockwave and they’re still popular. The game has managed to snag 3 million downloads on Android, and is one of the platforms top 100 grossing apps.

The company has hit its stride when it announced it has received funding from numerous sources including Google Ventures and 500 Startups.

Bionic Panda’s founder, Charles Hudson, said that the developer is focusing on the casual market. “The nice thing is that these games tend to have big mass market hits — which gives you the ability to benefit from volume and scale on the Android platform.”

Aqua Pets, like other freemium games, relies on a monetization method that attracts players with a free game and then introduces micro-payments to unlock new features and items in-game. It’s an incredibly effective method, just look at Zynga and their “Ville” games.

Hudson finds the biggest issue with the Android platform is the payment system. Hudson told TechCrunch that he is a believer in Google Wallet, but it has lower monetization rates than games on the iOS platform.

The problem lies in the fact that Google Wallet has far less credit cards on file. Apple had been in a superior position from the start since they tied existing iTunes accounts into their iOS App store on iDevices. Users on both devices can make one click purchases, but Android users have to set up an account first. This small obstacle is apparently a deterrent to setting up a Google Wallet account.

Hudson finally said that his company is not just solely focused on Google. They are interested in developing for Amazon’s version of Droid for Kindle and they may make the jump to iOS one day. All in due time though as the company has two new games on the horizon: Poker Farm Pets and Angry Zombies.

2007 is nearly gone, and not a peep out of anybody except the Casual Games Association, which says 150 million people play free, casual games online, outpacing game consoles, first-person shooter games, and massively multiplayer games.

And where there’s an audience that size, there’s a market.

Even better to marketers, a large chunk of the casual game (card and board games, puzzles and word games, trivia games, game shows, simulations and arcade-type action games) demographic is women over 30, in sharp contrast to the young male demo that dominates the other sectors.

Women in general make up 74 percent of the casual gaming market.

In sheer numbers, that’s about 60 million downloads monthly, and a projected total revenue in 2008 of $690 million in the North America, $1.5 billion worldwide.

By 2010, as I mentioned last time, in-game advertising money is expected to reach $1 billion.

So, we have a highly targetable demographic, a huge audience, higher access rates and speeds, and lots of income potential.

What else might help casual games take off? How about a social, user-generated aspect to it?

Venture Beat’s Chris Morrison reported something interesting about that:

"Norton says that in the future, players will begin to embed games on their own pages, whether that’s a Facebook profile or a personal webpage, and that casual games will become much more personalized."

Bingo and bammo.

I may have been a little early in my prediction, but it’s still looking good for the future.

MySpace Games will allow members of the site to place games on their profile pages and play them with other MySpace members. Users will be able to chat during the games and invite others to play.

"Bringing entertainment in the form of fun, social, casual games will enhance our user experience," said Amit Kapur, VP of Business Development for MySpace. "Our goal is to provide our members with an easy way to play with their friends and give them with additional ways to interact."

MySpace Games is scheduled to launch in January and will offer hundreds of free games aimed at the casual gaming crowd. Casual games brought in $380 million in revenue last year in the U.S. while console games brought in $4.7 billion in sales, according to estimates by Pacific Crest Securities and NPD Group.

The two companies are asking developers to submit their ideas for new forms of social gaming to myspace@oberon-media.com.