Tag: mobile gaming

Prominent game developer sees the future of gaming migrating toward the mobile space

Japanese game developer Konami believes that mobile gaming is the future. Mobile gaming has become a very powerful force in the game industry. According to a report from games marketing platform AppLift, the mobile gaming market is expected to reach $23.9 billion in 2016, growing exponentially in the years thereafter. Several large developers are beginning to take more interest in the mobile space because of the promise that the market shows.

Konami to pursue mobile gaming aggressively

Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa has announced a new direction for the company, noting that Konami will aggressively pursue the development of mobile games. Hayakawa claims that mobile will become the developer’s main platform, adopting a “pay-as-you-play” model that has become common in this sector. Konami has seen that even people that purchase physical copies of games are inclined to purchase additional content, usually through in-game transactions.

In-game transactions make mobile games an attractive platform for developers

The developer is citing the popularity of games such as Power pro and Winning Eleven as the examples of the promise of mobile gaming. These games have in-game transactions that provide players with additional content that make them more attractive to players. Purchasing additional content through in-game transactions, often referred to as “microtransactions,” is not a popular business practice among gamers, though many people purchase additional content willingly. Some suggest that such models are simply opportunistic ways for developers to generate more revenue.

Mobile gaming may be the way to get more people involved in games

Konami believes that there is no longer a reason to divide the gaming market into several categories. For many years, the market has been separated by categories, such as console, PC, and mobile gaming. Konami has no intention of perpetuating this division, however, believing that mobile games are the way to get more people involved in gaming as a whole. As such, Konami will be committing more focus to the development of mobile games in the future.

It is believed that these games will take off to such a degree that consoles will be left in the dust.

Digi-Capital, an intelligence firm, has released the results of some of its latest research, which has revealed that spending on mobile gaming software is growing at such a rate that it will have left consoles way behind by the year 2018.

It has predicted that spending on mobile games across all platforms, this year, will reach $88 billion.

This will, in fact, mean that mobile gaming will not only outpace that of consoles, but of the entire industry. Digi-Capital has also predicted that the tablet and smartphone games spending figure will rise at a rate of 8 percent per year, so that it will break the $110 billion mark by the close of 2018. No other type of device is expected to generate a greater amount of revenue than mobile when it comes to video games. In fact, those devices are predicted to bring in more money than consoles by this year, already.

These console and mobile gaming figures do not include the sales from hardware, such as the systems themselves.

The figures are based on the sale of mobile games, only, and do not include the income generated from the sale of systems such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Furthermore, those figures also didn’t take into account the PC games over Steam, or any of the massively successful free-to-play games such as League of Legends.

Tim Merel, the founder and managing director of Digi-Capital, explained in the company’s report that “Where mobile games will take $3 of every $10 spent by gamers on software in 2015, that figure will go up to $4 out of every $10 by 2018.” He also went on to add that “Mobile games revenue will grow from $29 billion in 2015 to $45 billion by 2018 at 15 percent annual growth.”

Merel explained that since 2013, the Asian market has dominated the revenue for mobile gaming, when compared to Europe and North America. The company forecasted that this market will continue to move ahead, until it will represent half of all revenue in smartphone and tablet based games by 2018.