Pottermore Magic for Online Entertainment Industry

June 23, 2011 - PRLog -- A wizard plan by author JK Rowling to launch an interactive website for Harry Potter fans will be magic for an already booming online entertainment industry.

Devotees of the teenage wizard have been left spellbound by Rowling's Pottermore project after she revealed plans for a new website designed to let fans engage and interact with the magical hero and bring his  adventures to life for the digital generation.

“There are already more than 23million casual gamers in the UK. That figure is growing rapidly and JK Rowling's entry to the online entertainment market will raise interest even more,” said Ken Gauld, founder  of Ntrails.com, a UK-based global online treasure hunt which encourages players to race against the clock to solve a series of puzzles over the course of a week to win a cash prize.

“Various studies have shown people are spending more time online than watching television. It is probably the fastest growing entertainment sector in the world and the likes of JK Rowling and Warner Bros getting involved is further evidence of that. The UK casual games market alone is estimated to be worth around £35 million and a third of people now consider themselves gamers

“The fact that a lot of Harry Potter fans are female also fits very well with industry trends. There are some 14.3 million female casual gamers in the UK and 12.6million male, it's a booming market. Although Ntrails.com is aimed at both sexes and almost any age the number of women playing is increasing fast and in the last two months alone a third of our winners have been female.

“The interactive entertainment industry has always excelled at cross media innovation and Pottermore is the latest example of how other mediums are looking to capitalise on their Intellectual Property”.

Announcing the launch of Pottermore, which is scheduled for October, JK Rowling said the new site would provide previously unpublished material about some of the Harry Potter characters and encourage readers to use their imagination to interact with the stories.

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For more information on ntrails.com please visit www.ntrails.com or call Peppercorn PR on 0845 217 8757.

Note to Editors:
Ntrails  was set up in 2010 to offer a low cost, fun, exciting Treasure Hunt game that everyone could play.
In addition to a number of free games players can pay $1 (61p) to join a weekly internet based treasure hunt which involves them searching selected websites for up to 20 hidden passwords. Winners are the first people to complete the Treasure Hunt having entered all the passwords correctly.
The Ntrails Treasure Hunt is a game of skill, not luck. Every penny participants pay to play is paid out in prizes.