Gaming as a whole is very much on the way up, the emergence of esports to a bigger market has really helped catapult gaming into the spotlight but it isn’t just this as a spectator sport which has helped – mobile gaming has also done a big part on really pushing gaming into popular culture on the past five to ten years and it doesn’t really show any signs of slowing down. But is this all just a trend? Or is the growth that is being experienced here to stay.
Whilst it isn’t an exact science, one of the clear indicators that mobile gaming may be around for the longer term is that it has been adopted by a much wider audience than other forms of gaming – the entire mobile gaming market makes up over 50% of all gaming, and much further from the belief that it is filled with young teen males the opposite is very much true – mobile gaming is primarily dominated by women gamers over the age of 34, a demographic in gaming that typically hasn’t been represented before. This has also led to a changing in genres played as those with a disposable income are more likely to pay for games in which they’re playing – this has led to a rise in uses of games such as mobile casinos and the introduction of regulation preventing a rising number of problem players, despite this operators are registering elsewhere and other options are becoming available as a growing number of European and USA casinos accepting UK players are readily available and capturing more and more players each year.
Cost is also an important factor here – whilst there has been a lot of criticism around newer devices reaching into the $1,000 and higher price range, mobile phones are still considered pretty much a necessity to have – having a console costing hundreds, with the additional cost of games and accessories on top, the price quickly adds up – doing everything on one device makes more sense, which has been a big step in removing the barrier to gaming. As more titles become available on mobile devices this gap will close even further, which has already been shown to be successful with popular battle-royale titles like Fortnite, but there’s still plenty of work to be done for it to really attract more enthusiast players too.
It’s probably safe to say at this point that it isn’t just a trend, and whilst it likely won’t ever completely replace PC and console gaming, it has become what many can consider gaming to be – if the past decade is anything to go by, the next decade will be extremely exciting for mobile gaming as a whole as hardware continues to allow more options to become available – the next stage may be to have popular triple A titles see some representation on our mobile devices, but for now it seems the future is very much held in online and multiplayer titles through more casual genres, and that mobile gaming as a whole will continue to represent a large portion of the future of gaming in general.