Tag: smartphone gaming

While the hottest smartphone games remain popular, previously overlooked titles get a new chance at this time of year.

At this time of year, holiday travelers are on the roads, sitting in airports, or crammed in the seats of planes, buses and trains, heading to various destinations around the world, and mobile gaming has become an important part of that experience.

These mobile games have allowed children and adults alike to remain entertained throughout long wait times.

The trendiest mobile gaming apps are typically easiest for users to find, since they are often featured at the marketplaces from which they can be downloaded. However, for many travelers, who have to spend hour upon hour in waiting areas and in vehicles as they cross the country to be with their loved ones over the holidays, the most popular games aren’t enough. They need more in order to fill that amount of time. This has opened up opportunities for hidden gems to be discovered.

There have been a number of mobile gaming apps that have already started to be found to be diamonds in the rough.

Among the mobile games that have seen considerable increases in their successes due to holiday travelers are:

• SimpleRockets (By Jundaroo) – this app is available for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone and is a mobile take on the game designed for PC called the Kerbal Space Program, which was highly popular. It requires players to assemble different components to build a rocket ship that will work and take the user to various parts of the moon, the solar system, and the rest of the universe.

• Auralux (By War Drum Studios) – this is a free strategy game app that is simple in design and rules, but complex in the strategy required. It is available for Android and iOS devices and uses the very basics in military planning to create complicated events for defense and capture.

• Virtual Pool Mobile (By Celeris) – this is a mobile gaming alternative to a PC game that had been designed to provide a billiards playing experience that was physically accurate. In fact, the PC game came with a promise that if the accuracy of its physics didn’t allow the player to improve his or her real game of pool, they would get their money back.

High resolution devices may be the key to successful mobile games

Mobile games have become something of a phenomenon in the game industry. These games have proven to be rampantly popular with consumers, many of whom are more than willing to participate in in-game advertising and mobile purchases. As such, the mobile games market is considered to be significantly lucrative and home to very promising opportunities for developers. These developers do, of course, have to find ways to encourage consumers to make in-app purchases. A new study from mobile games studio Pocket Gems suggests that this may be a matter of quality in mobile technology rather than mobile games themselves.

Study suggests screen quality influences in-app purchases

The study from Pocket Gems suggests that the quality of a mobile devices screen directly influences whether consumers will make an in-app purchase. Consumers that play mobile games on better quality screens, such as those typically found on tablet devices, are more likely to make in-app purchases than those that play games on lower quality screens. Pocket Gems notes that Android users with high resolution mobile devices are up to 10 times more likely to purchase in-game items or virtual currencies.

Popularity of high resolution devices may be a sign of disposable income

This may be because many consumers consider high resolution screens to be synonymous with processing power for mobile devices, which may lead consumers to believe that some mobile games are better than they actually are. Consumers that have a high opinion of a game or its developer typically tend to support that game or developer more strongly. Pocket Gems notes that consumers with high resolution devices are more likely to have disposable incomes as well, which makes them more likely to conduct in-app purchases.

Android shows greatest potential for mobile games monetization

The study suggests that mobile games developers looking to find major success in the game industry may do well to tailor their games for high resolution devices. The study shows that the correlation between screen resolution and monetization is the highest in Android tablets. Conversely, the study shows that the iPad has no correlation between resolution and monetization whatsoever.