Mobile Gaming Cements Its Dominance, Takes Majority of Worldwide Sales (arstechnica.com) 94
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Newzoo's 2018 Global Games Market Forecast now predicts that mobile games will make up a slim majority (51 percent) of all worldwide gaming revenue this year (including smartphones and tablets, but not dedicated gaming handhelds). That's up from 34 percent in 2015 and just 18 percent in 2012. Console and PC games will split the remainder of the pie relatively evenly in 2018, at 25 percent and 24 percent of worldwide spending, respectively. The growth of the mobile market doesn't show any signs of stopping, either: by 2021, Newzoo estimates that 59 percent of all gaming spending will go to mobile platforms, with console and PC games dividing up the scraps. The report finds that China is responsible for 28 percent of all gaming spending in the world, up from 24 percent in 2015. "Mobile gaming is overrepresented in the world's biggest gaming market, responsible for 61 percent of all Chinese gaming revenue and poised to grow to 70 percent by 2021," reports Ars. Japan's overall spending on mobile games is nearly on par with the United States, despite the country having one-third as many gamers overall.
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I would take the original DOOM on a 486 before playing a game on a stupid phone.
You are being out-voted in the market by those who think the opposite.
New headline (Score:1, Informative)
"Majority of non-gamers have short attention spans, spend money badly."
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"Majority of non-gearheads have poor driving skills, spend money badly"
Would the above statement be well received as to explain why most Kia models sell more units than most Ferrari models? Hell, I drive a 28 old Supra, and I do all of my gaming on PC, and I still think that it's an elitist statement.
We all seek different things from gaming, and I assume that those who game on mobile devices scratch their itch just as well as I scratch mine.
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I don't care if you are mauled by a rabid raccoon and left for dead in a ditch. In fact, there's not a single person in the world who would care, except for the poor guys who had to clean up your mess.
Worst platform for gaming? I belive so. (Score:4, Informative)
What I really wonder is what these kids will do when they get old. You won't be able to find that old phone with a sealed battery. It'll be way way way gone to the landfill. The games will also still be squirreled away into an "app store" etc... I have cartridges. They don't have DRM etc...
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Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges have no cryptographic "digital restrictions management" as that term is understood today. The boot ROM just checks for a header ($0104-$014F on GB/GBC, $000000-$0000BF on GBA) that has a valid checksum and some typography in it. Nintendo handhelds didn't start using DRM until the DS, which encrypts the cart edge interface using Blowfish.
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Have you looked at the smart-phone addicts lately?
They seem to have lost the ability to have a slow moment, and as soon as they're not fully stimulated they'll pull out the phone.
It's actually kind of pathetic ... or it would be if they weren't all shambling around like walking roadblocks with their damned face buried in the phone.
I've lost count of the number of times I've been out for dinner, and seen the
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There are a couple of decent games, the rest are somewhat simpleminded. You can't spend a lot of time on them as they're intended to be used for 5 minutes at a time and then you put it away for a few hours. Except that then you're hooked maybe and keep checking in every hour instead, and then that's not enough and you start paying real money to speed things up. These are not going to keep you occupied much at the dentist's office.
Though I did like the Stranger Things game (free) which was a throwback to a
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I play Sudoku on my phone. Not every game is some stupid action shooter that demands a large screen and physical controllers. This article is filled with commenters who are elitist, self-centered and stupid fucks.
I agree (Score:3)
I still don't like gaming on consoles, I could never get the hang of a console controller vs the mouse and KB, and can't understand watching videos or gaming on a tiny phone screen. Give me my PC and a mouse, hooked to my big screen TV. I still am waiting for a controller that takes a mouse into a true 3D mode. For those that remember the Descent engine, and Descent into UnderMountain. I was so looking forward to a truly 3D dungeon crawler with incremental sword control, but the lack of a good controller s
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You should check out the HTC Vive, my dude.
HTC Vive... (Score:2)
WOW, that does look cool. Too bad my PC does not meet any of the specs :( I may have to work some overtime to get a new gaming rig and then look into this. Not sure I've seen any new titles I'd really want to play that badly though.
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Elite: Dangerous might scratch your descent itch, it's a really well done VR game although the game feels unfinished and lacks content. There are lots of fun games, I'm into the counterstrike clone with realistic weapon reloading, there's also lots of wave shooters like the good Serious Sam game. A lot of fun and whacky experiences. A lot of the games are rushed to market since this is such a new area, which means they don't have great graphics, which means they'll run on your older system :)
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Point-and-click games is all (Score:2)
In fact, there's a whole slew of great mobile games that won't translate well to a controller - the likes of Jetpack Joyride, Collossotron, Threes, plenty of table games etc.
Jetpack Joyride is a flappy game, and flappy games are ultimately clones of the "Balloon Trip" mode in Balloon Fight for the Nintendo Entertainment System. There's a Threes clone for NES by tsone, titled 2048 [romhacking.net]. I had to look up Colossatron, and everything I see in a gameplay video [youtube.com] looks doable with a mouse, an analog stick, a Nintendo 3DS touch screen, or a Wii Remote.
And it's perfectly fine - the best games on any platform make use of the platform's best features and try not to imitate features that don't exist
In other words, one- or two-button or point-and-click games. Game designs under that restriction have on the whole tended to be more shallo
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Why do you bother breathing, when you don't produce anything useful? Just go away and die.
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Had me until the end
Those AAA studios are
1) Redirecting their resources towards said lucrativity ("it's just good business")(konami/squeenix are especially transparent about the redirecting)
2) Taking advantage of the culture shift to dilute AAA titles
"GTA V has made more money than any book, film, record or video game ever released." That's great, right? Studios will be willing to front millions to refine quality titles, right?
A lot of that was due to the $500M that has flowed out of the GTA:O freemium MMO.
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https://www.cnet.com/news/nint... [cnet.com]
Article says posted yesterday
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> I just don't "get" the appeal of gaming on a phone.
* Portability, and
* Addiction, aka hurry-up-and-wait [baekdal.com] gaming, loot boxes, and exploitation [gamesindustry.biz]
To fully answer the question, you need to understand the:
Psychology of gaming whales [google.com]
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What confuses the gamer about articles like this. The mobile gaming market is not taking customers from the PC or console market, these phone gaming market is an addition to the gaming market adding revenue. The big overall numbers for mobile gaming hide the underlying hugely competitive market place, where games sell for next to nothing, are born, gain token market share (protected by a massive market so even tiny market share still means some revenue) and die in short order, every mobile game a momentary
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You can't play 99% of these games unless they're on the internet anyway. They require a phone-home to work.
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What I really wonder is why your parents were allowed to raise a self-centered piece of shit. It's not too late to improve the world by ripping you apart, limb from limb.
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these are not the typical games, but short simple affairs. just check the article on google's new project arcade.
the first game will be some trivia thingy, fine for a phone and will kill those 2 minutes you had while waiting in a queue somewhere or the 10 minute bus ride.
why not catch up on the news or read a book instead, i don't know, because people are lazy and easily entertained?
51% is "dominance"? (Score:2)
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Sure, when the next highest category (consoles) is only 25%.
Does this include revenue from ads (Score:3)
Year of Linux for gaming (Score:2)
With Linux now owning 80% of the mobile market and the 49% of the non-mobile gaming market split between PC and console, this means that Linux now dominates gaming by revenue, and even more so by units.
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To be precise, Android dominates IOS in total game installs, and is well on its way to dominating IOS in total revenue.
Yes its true and has been (Score:4, Insightful)
The market for games on phone and pads is huge.
All you Na-Sayers and old timers that don't play games on your iPhone because your PC is better, well your not the target audience, and you probably never played a game on your phone or pad.
Its not as bad as you would think and it's designed for those devices and the graphics are way better than you think.
No one wants to lug around a PC computer to play a multiplayer game.
There is a place for everything for everybody,
BTW, I have been playing games since the 80's on all devices and still do, including PC.
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All you Na-Sayers and old timers that don't play games on your iPhone because your PC is better, well your not the target audience, and you probably never played a game on your phone or pad.
It's not a market, the internet has literally given companies super powers over the vast majority of tech illiterate people on this planet allowing them to effectively steal software and get paid doing it. The "Mobile revolution" isn't. It's the fact that the vast majority of the people who have phones haven no fucking idea what they are doing when they give money to gatcha games that 99% of mobile gaming is comprised of. Mobile revenue is making money off less than 1% of the customers. So while more th
Re:Yes its true and has been (Score:5, Insightful)
> Its not as bad as you would think and it's designed for those devices and the graphics are way better than you think.
Yes it is. It's far worse. Whales are < 2% of the customers, but make > 95% of the money for game developers.
https://venturebeat.com/2013/0... [venturebeat.com]
As an ex-professional game developer 95+% of mobile games are crap [gamesindustry.biz]
* Hurry-up-and-wait [baekdal.com] gaming that constantly nag you
* Exploitative predatory tactics such as gambling (loot boxes), in-app-purchases, and ads.
* Mobile games tend not to respect your time, money, or space.
There ARE games that don't exploit the players:
* Hidden Folks
* Limbo
* Minecraft
* Terreria
* The Room (and all its sequels)
* The Witness
*etc.
You have to look, [digitaltrends.com] but they are there.
> No one wants to lug around a PC computer to play a multiplayer game.
Uh, that's what mobile gaming is -- by definition.
This is ignoring the fact that some games just DON'T work (well) on a mobile. i.e. Let me know when I can play:
* Starcraft 2
* World of Warcraft
on a phone.
Mouse + Keyboard is vastly superior for some games.
Mobile gaming is here to stay. That's NOT the problem. The problem is the exploitative behavior.
It is bullshit like this [wordpress.com] is driving the mobile games straight into the ground.
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Fear not, AR virtual keyboards are on the way soon. Once phones ditch screens, and just have an AR interface, mobile game interaction will improve (make a throwing motion with your arm to aim that pokeball, etc.).
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> Its not as bad as you would think
Yes it is. [youtu.be]
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No one wants to lug around a PC computer to play a multiplayer game.
There is a place for everything for everybody,
BTW, I have been playing games since the 80's on all devices and still do, including PC.
If no one wants to lug around a PC, then there really isn't a place for everybody, eh?
If you RTFA and look at last figure (I know, I know...), you will see that console and PC game units ($ of market) have actually kept their shares or possibly even grown slightly. However, mobile gaming use has exploded.
So your assessment isn't really correct. Some people like to play on PCs. Some like to play consoles. An increasing number of people are playing games on their mobiles, which implies that mobile gaming
Define 'mobile gaming' games for me, please? (Score:2)
Not Game Boy or PSP (Score:2)
Read the summary. The "mobile" figure is "including smartphones and tablets, but not dedicated gaming handhelds" such as the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita.
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> So when they're referring to 'mobile gaming', do they mean these 'twitch games' people play on their phones?
Not just twitch games. Those and more.
* Hurry-up-and-wait games [baekdal.com]
* Social Games which are neither social, nor games
* Games that exploit players with loot boxes, and dual currencies.
* Games with IAP (In-App-Purchases) and RMT (Real-Money-Transactions) which the Desktop and Console industry sucked righted up.
Mobile Games = anything not on a desktop, laptop, or console; that is, Mobile games are any
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Yup.
The exact same problem in the Games Industry can also be seen in Movies and Music with how formulaic everything has become.
Anytime a creative market gets popular its gets monetized up the wazoo and the suits drive it into the ground sucking the soul of it along the way. News at 11.
The mobile space is just the latest fad.
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PC And Console Games Have Become Booooring (Score:2)
Re: PC And Console Games Have Become Booooring (Score:1)
I agree with everything except the last part. As a mobile game developer you only make money if 1. You have a massive advertising budget because high user volumes is required to make money from IAP and ads 2. You won the app developer lottery and somehow it went viral organically. Like capitalism, the top 1% make 95% of the wealth
Also there are an overwealming number of mindless tapping games that seem to be popular. I think mobile games are shit too
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> The people who finance AAA Console and PC games
Why are you ignoring indies that don't exploit players???
Best Indy Games [google.com]:
* Minecraft
* Terraria
Or more recent ones like:
* AM2R
* Braid
* Castle Crashers
* Cave Story
* Cuphead
* Fez
* Inside
* Limbo
* Path of Exile
* Super Meat Boy
* Stardew Valley
* The Witness
> PC and Console is in pathetic shape right now by comparison. No innovation. No experimentation
AAA games yes, but indies ARE trying new stuff.
Metroid II != indie (Score:2)
One slight correction: Your list included AM2R, a port of Metroid II. Metroid II is a first-party Game Boy game from Nintendo, which was released when Nintendo dominated handheld video gaming. That looks way more AAA than indie to me. Had it instead been an original IP, it would have been indie.
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AM2R is NOT a port -- it is a fan remake, aka an indy.
Milton "DoctorM64" Guasti [blogspot.nl] is a sound technician [blogger.com] who used Game Maker [blogspot.nl] to create AM2R without Nintendo's permission.
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without Nintendo's permission.
Which is why I cannot count it.
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Doesn't change the fact that a bunch of indies made it.
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Yes, and since i have steambox for gaming, i mostly am gaming indies because they are the best represented on that platform (there are also AAA, but not like on windows where you get 10 of those each month).
Anyway, my steambox is by far the best 'console' i've had for a long time. the games are fun and oiginal or at least try something different or new.
I can't afford it anymore (Score:1)
Giants Chasing the Money (Score:2)
This is why former Japanese heavyweights like Konami are exiting the console games business and focusing on mobile; if you can slap a new coat of paint on the same game design, you can save tons of money. Oh and then you can fire your designers like Kojima.
If it weren't for sequels, Square-Enix and Capcom would've gotten out of the console games business as well. Look at how few new IPs they've created in the last 15 years, it's depressing.
It seems like Platinum Games is the only AAA-ish Japanese developer
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