Gamification : The race between console and mobile games in 2015 and beyond

What mobile games lack in finesse in the control department, they make up in accessibility. The fact that the number of smartphone users continues to grow by staggering amounts each year accounts for the massive growth in mobile games – almost certainly the sector with the biggest percentage increase in year-over-year growth when all is tallied.

Long gone are the cheap flash cash-ins that filled the seminal charts of Android’s the App Store’s top games list in the early days of the smartphone gaming.

Well, that is almost true – these games still exist, of course, since anyone with a bit of basic programming knowledge can more or less just ship an undercooked app and put it other there, only now they are competing with the big boys for exposure. The publishing mammoths of the console landscape like Warner Bros. and 2K have since taken notice and are investing more in the mobile gaming world, while new companies like Zynga and Rovio have gone on to become giants themselves.

Alongside the world beaters (and former game of the year winner) like XCOM: Enemy Within and Injustice: Gods Among Us top-notch ports appear original classics like the Angry Birds phenomenon, which has gone on to secure enough cultural cache that one of its offshoots, Angry Birds in Space, now appears in the NASA Space Centre as a recognisable brand name that kids will want to interact with.

The Domino Effect of Casino Games

Another huge reason why the mobile games industry has and continues to grow in huge spurts is thanks to the digital wave of casinos hitting our smartphones. Sites like LuckyAdmiral offer tons in the way of different games to play – there’s everything from a variety of themed slot games along with more traditional casino fare like Classic Blackjack or Premiere Roulette – all with the added incentives of promotions for doing things like signing up, redepositing into your account, or playing on certain days of the week.

These kinds of services, replete with solid gameplay and bonuses to keep players coming back, is clearly resonating with its target demographic, as more and more sites keep popping up to keep up with demand of 61.2 million social casino gamers in the US alone.

A Non-Cannibalising Market

While the argument regarding market forces typically pitch console, PC, and mobile gamers at odds with one another, the truth of the matter is that gamers often are not substituting one platform for another, but are complementing each other as different platforms that are used at different times. For use in the house, the traditional juxtaposition of PC versus console made more sense before the advent of mobile gaming, but nowadays gamers tend to play one at home, and one on the go.

George Osborn of Mobile Mavericks says that, upon reading stats and reports, ‘it’s clear that most players are not in one camp or the other; they’re in both.’ He adds that, ‘big spenders on mobile games also spend significantly within the rest of the gaming space.

Free marketers, who share game content but don’t pay for it, aren’t casual gamers; they’re an audience who respect and play core games.’With big players like Nintendo now on board the mobile cash machine, it will only be a matter of time before mobile sales truly dwarf the once king of the arena that was the console platform.

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