The Impact of Mobile Gaming

Consoles and PC’s no longer rule the gaming world, and haven’t for some time, courtesy of mobile gaming and the heightened accessibility to smartphones around the world. If you look at the financial figures alone; mobile gaming generated almost $100 billion worth of revenue in 2016 alone; consoles simply cannot match these numbers.

This incredible sum of revenue sounds very impressive but when you look at the year on year percentages; things get even more interesting. Mobile gaming’s year on year totalled an 8.5% increase in revenue in 2016 where PC gaming recorded a rise of 21.3%. This suggests that the PC market is still booming but the total revenue totalled $36.9 billion – firmly in the shadow of the mobile behemoth.

Convenience has proven to be one of the primary reasons as to why mobile gaming is outstripping the more traditional gaming methods as a players can indulge their gaming needs wherever they may be; as long as they have a tablet or smartphone on their person and it seems you can’t go anywhere without seeing at least one person with their eyes fixed on a portable screen.

Aside from the convenience factor; accessibility is also playing a huge part in the growth of mobile gaming. Across all age groups, mobile gaming is becoming a part of daily life – whether it's friendly titles such as Angry Birds or games that appeal to the older generation like those found on CasinoCruise, there’s something for everyone.

In tandem with these two primary factors; the online aspect of gaming is fast becoming the mainstay of mobile gaming. Promoting the social aspect of gaming by competing or cooperating with other players was a masterstroke for the gaming industry but the mobile games are still outperforming the console and PC titles in the online sector.

Between online gambling, augmented reality and recognisable characters; mobile gaming has taken the world by storm as progressively more and more players leave their consoles behind in favour of their handsets.

You need only look at the wildly popular Pokémon GO to see just how much of an impact mobile gaming is having on the world. Millions of players worldwide are taking to the streets, smartphone in hand, to seek out the forever popular pocket monsters – promoting exercise and enjoyment at the same time; something the Nintendo Wii attempted but failed to really implement globally over time.

Nintendo themselves have been the first to truly react to the mobile gaming wave as they continue to authorise third party companies to use their characters to develop mobile gaming apps. Super Mario Run is Nintendo’s first mobile title to be developed in-house and is also taking the world by storm.

Mobile gaming has had such an impact that even modern consoles are offering players the chance to play on the move with the Nintendo Switch actively promoting gaming on the move and the PlayStation Vita offering progressively more and more to the Sony faithful.
These attempts to jump on the mobile gaming bandwagon may have arrived too late as smartphones and tablets continue to dominate the market but time will tell. All that is certain is mobile gaming is the future no matter the platform.