Is Mobile gaming an opportunity or a threat? How does Mobile gaming influence the gaming market worldwide? There are many unanswered questions in people’s minds. Every day there are countless new apps launched in the AppStore in IOS or Android phones. Almost the majority of these turn out to be games. The evolution of mobile games is strikingly distinct and noteworthy. People are constantly divulging the habit of spending hours on their smartphones playing mobile games. Not just casual games, but certain titles have made it big. These titles also feature Esports and host popular competitions around the globe. Millions of players are actually practicing day in day out to go pro. Mobile gamers are real and the market for Mobile Esports is constantly on the rise.
How Big Is The Mobile Gaming Market?
With millions of Video gamers turning into mobile gamers, the popularity of mobile gaming is skyrocketing with each passing day. Mobile games attract people of all ages and not just teenagers. People are found spending time on mobile games all the time. Be it a boring office meeting, or a science convention, a security guard, or even a grocery store attendant, the mobile game offers an easy escape from the busy life schedule and helps people relax for a bit. The best things about most mobile games are that they don’t take up an ample amount of time. Just some casual gaming before going back to work.
The mobile gaming market is growing and expanding rapidly. It is predicted that by 2030, the worth of the mobile gaming market will expand to $272 billion. With the rapid fashion the market is growing, it is only a matter of time that mobile games take over the entire gaming industry. According to data, people downloaded over 80 billion mobile games in 2020. Subsequently, the expense after a mobile game has also gone up. Players have spent more than $100 billion on mobile games last year. This number is going to reach $138 billion by 2025.
Let alone the revenue coming from all these mobile games, an average mobile gamer spends more than 4.5 hours per day on mobile games. This is crazy right? Not exactly. People are found to do a lot of things throughout the day that is deemed not productive. On the other hand, spending time on mobile games is allowing gamers around the world to hone their skills to the next level. This in return makes the particular game famous. Thus the market of mobile gaming continues to grow.
Early History Of Mobile Gaming
Mobile gaming gained its ground mostly in the last decade. The very reason its genesis can be traced from the significant development of the smartphone market. Before smartphones, there were only phones- with keypads and sometimes a little extra screen. But is mobile gaming only associated with smartphones? Not exactly. Mobile gaming history can be traced back to the early 2000s too with the advent of color digital phones. Games like carom, soccer, and cricket could be casually played in those little digital handsets using the keypads. Snakes and ball games were also famous mobile time-pass back in those days. Slowly with time, NFS made its way into the keypad handsets followed by arcade games. As time passed, Android phones came into existence and mobile gaming changed completely.
The very first versions of android games that went popular are Temple Run, Subway Surfer, Classic Tiles, Fruit ninja, and others. With the gradual development of android and IOS technology, mobile gaming also started to evolve. Different categories of mobile games were starting to release- arcade, puzzles, Role-playing Games, First Person Shooter, and many others. Newer and better versions of old games also started to hit the market and gained instant popularity. People started to enjoy the easy simple way of gaming that costs less and is also time effective. With the increased demand for mobile games, Smartphone companies started to give priority to gaming features of the phone like RAM, processor, and cooling.
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Why Did Mobile Gaming Become So Famous?
Mobile gaming created an uproar among people of all ages who wanted to have hat one little escape from reality. For gamers, it showed an easy viable, and pocket-friendly option to shift into. Various companies dedicated entire wings for research into mobile gaming and publishers were hired to make new and developed mobile games. The mobile gaming industry now controls almost half the gaming market across the globe. This control is likely to spread in upcoming years. The mobile ads that run in 2020 reached the landmark of $240 million. As more percentage of mobile gamers are casual gamers, Casual games downloads were more than core games. Around 70 percent of mobile games downloads were casual games. According to data, the App Store made 66 percent of its revenue from mobile games. Many reasons can be accounted for the popularity of mobile games. Some of them are-
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Convenience of gaming
Mobile games are compact, time-effective, and fits right into the busy schedule of the modern world. One does not need to dedicate time after mobile games specifically unless they are trying to win some gaming championships. Every day casual gamers find time in between their busy hours. The simplicity of mobile games offers that extra relaxation period to people who crave that break between work and daily life. It is more convenient to play on Smartphones than to set up a console or PC for a causal game break.
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Cost-Effective
For a PC or Console gamer, there is a certain gaming cost that they have to bear. Console gaming gears come at a hefty price. Also for PC gamers, the price of a good processor, extra RAM, and heavy Solid State Drives incur more costs than expected. On the contrary, a mobile gamer only pays for a good smartphone. People who do casual gaming need not even spend any money in-game. Most of the casual games are free to play. Other than that Gamers who aspire to play professionally can find it easy to bear mobile gaming costs than upgrading or maintaining PC or console expenditures. Newer versions of PlayStations and Xbox costs a fortune while premium games on smartphones can be bought with little or no money at all.
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Easy to Play
The complexity of games is another reason why Mobile gaming is gaining more popularity than PC or Console Games. The former is easy to use and play since the whole concept of mobile gaming is based on screen touch and sometimes motion control. On the other hand, a console game can be really challenging especially with controllers and mods. The best thing about Mobile games is the simplicity of control and usage. The best example in this regard can be the popular Battle Royale Shooter game PUBG. PUBG is primarily a PC game that went famous in late 2017. But PUBG makers also released a mobile gaming version of PUBG known as the PUBG mobile. The mobile counterpart of PUBG is far easy to play and involves simpler mechanics and quick gaming. On the contrary in the PC version other than veteran players one may find it difficult to even aim and shoot.
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Social Gaming
Gone are the days when kids used to lock themselves up in their attic and play games alone all day long. With the advent of online games, gaming paved the way for social bonding. Player-to-player bond and relation became a common thing. The concept of gaming teams and competitive tournaments are all fuelled by the same thoughts. As time passed, mobile gaming made it far easier to socialize and bond with fellow gamers via in-game chats and voice messages. Many became friends over a game and the idea of socializing was stronger than ever.
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Innovations
Innovations of new technologies played important role in paving the way for Mobile gaming. The idea of the giant screen and competitive tapping to control a racing car did sound like a fantasy in the past. But with innovations and modern technologies smartphone companies revolutionized the gaming needs of people. The gaming companies were quick to pounce on this opportunity and use this to shape the mobile gaming future. Today, developers are in constant competition to develop and publish the best versions of new and modern mobile games. Each of these inventions targets a specific group of people keeping in mind their needs.
Is mobile gaming an Opportunity?
Many believe that the invention of modern mobile games is the best thing to have happened in a long time. The idea of casually playing on one’s smartphone really fascinates everyone. Along with the advent of mobile gaming, there came subsidiary changes to the gaming profession as well. Mobile gaming is allowing many gamers to dream to go pro. Many gamers who couldn’t master the art of Console gaming or afford a gaming PC to practice now can dream to play mobile games professionally. Due to the COVID pandemic, while most of the private and public sectors took a hit, the market of mobile gaming prospered on the contrary. With lockdown in place, people had nothing to do instead of staying indoors and play games. Most people opted to get into mobile games mainly because of their ease of play.
According to statistics, there has been a 12 percent increase in the number of mobile gamers from 2019 to 2020. This number is likely to go further up in the present year. Several ad agencies are coming up with creative plans to run ads in mobile games and collecting huge payouts in return. The increasing popularity of mobile games directly affects the stocks of the parent company. Business-wise the gaming companies are reaping profit left and right with the increase of mobile gaming trends. The most revenue through mobile games is generated in China. Similarly, other Asian countries are also a hotbed for mobile games right now. In North America, the most profitable Mobile game genres are puzzles, casinos, and RPG. Garena Free Fire was the most downloaded mobile game of last year.
Is mobile gaming a threat?
With all the goods, there has to be some bad. Mobile gaming is thriving and the gaming market is alive mostly because of this. But there is a matter of concern even in this situation. With the daily increase in gaming hours, the youth are affected quite severely by the trend of mobile games. Many are lagging in their studies and failing to follow daily habits. Playing too many RPG and FPS games can cause feats of violence in young gamers. Instances have been recorded where young gamers have resorted to violent means in the house or outside following a gaming experience. Also, too much gaming can cause health issues as well. People might not realize that sitting in one place and tapping your fingers is not exactly any exercise. Mobile gaming is the reason why many people have gained weight over the lockdown.
There are many reasons to believe Mobile gaming can be a threat. But one certainly cannot ignore the prosperity and demand of mobile games in today’s market. Mobile gaming can give rise to a lot of job vacancies and career opportunities for gamers and non-gamers alike. There is a bright new world out there and mobile gaming surely would explore the world to its full content.
