A research report from Screen Digest has predicted the online game category to grow by a third from last year to make up 24 percent of the game market in 2010, reports Gamesindustry.biz. The report partly credits last year’s rise in popularity of games for social media and mobile platforms for fueling the appetite for connected gaming. But it predicts that networked game consoles are best positioned as the online game platform of choice, given their sizable install base, prominence in gamers living room, and hardware suited for storing and processing premium online content. Screen Digest s report also predicts that more than 65 million game consoles will be online by the end of 2010, breaking it down as 25 million Wii systems and about 20 million each for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The firm’s game analyst Piers Harding-Rolls pointed to the introduction of motion controllers for consoles by Sony and Microsoft as necessary innovations to compete both with Nintendo as well as non-console platforms vying for gamers attention. Read more at Gamesindustry.biz.