A few years ago, you’d have been laughed out of a gamer’s living room for suggesting mobile devices might ever rival home consoles. Fast forward to 2014, and the rate of smartphone/tablet adoption (one of the fastest in tech history) has catapulted gaming into a whole new dimension of portable fun possibilities.
Today, 1 in every 5 people on the planet carries a smartphone in their pocket; and 1 in 17 sports a tablet, reported BI Intelligence. It doesn’t take Einstein to recognize the potential such scale and reach holds for the business of ‘on the go’ fun. In America alone, 152 million people already play mobile games, of which 66 million pay to play them, Newzoo revealed. And recent trends suggest those numbers are set to soar. According to Nielsen, the average time US smartphone owners (18 and over) spend per month on video, audio and gaming apps has hiked a hefty 71% since just 2012, to 10 hours 34 minutes per month.
As mobile devices continue to grow, the mobile game category will only follow suit for its take-anywhere entertainment factor. Newzoo calculates that by 2017, the global games market will surpass $100 billion, of which smartphone and tablet games will seize 34% of market share. At $34 billion, that’s an almighty piece of the gaming pie, and a hefty prize pool up for grabs.
The stats highlight big windows of opportunity for game creators to flourish, but in an increasingly crowded space, with sky’s the limit scope to evolve, come even bigger questions and challenges to confront. Chiefly, how do you build a premium experience that cuts through gaming noise and taps emerging markets without getting lost?
“The challenge with mobile games is that even as it grows it remains very fragmented and overcrowded,” said DFC analyst, Jeremy Miller. “Companies need to be very cautious about their platform strategy and understand which markets and platforms are suitable for their particular product.”
For gaming companies, the level of competition in every aspect of business has never been greater (nor the reward of success more lucrative), but the fact remains: making games is hard. Making successful games is damn hard. So how do we, as an industry, elevate mobile to the next gaming level?
There’s no hard and fast formula for success… but there is a very important discussion that’s about to unfold around these questions, and the blinding bright future of gaming. An all-star industry lineup of movers, shakers, experts and visionaries has been assembled to confront game developers and business brains with the serious topics that drive serious industry growth. Unleashing the true power of mobile gaming commands a team effort. Let’s get the conversation started.
Hear Mikko Setala (Rovio), Christian Calderon (Dots) and other pioneers talk about the future of mobile gaming at the annual GameDevHacker Conference in New York City January 28th, 2015.
