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Mobile Gaming Cements Its Dominance, Takes Majority of Worldwide Sales (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the sign-of-the-times dept.

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.

2 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. New headline by Narcocide · · Score: 1, Informative

    "Majority of non-gamers have short attention spans, spend money badly."

  2. Worst platform for gaming? I belive so. by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 3, Informative

    No buttons, no directional controller, no rumble packs, crappy framebuffers with low-rent API's. I love games and I love game devices. I collect consoles and micros from the 1990's mostly. So, I'm definitely biased. I just don't "get" the appeal of gaming on a phone. I guess that it's because a parent will buy a phone for their kid so they can use it as a leash to track them. The kid gets unlimited gaming access, albeit on a shit-platform.

    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...