Last Wednesday and Friday, we have discussed about some topics about Mobile Games. Interestingly, most of the students in this class seems mentioned lots of the shortcomings of mobile game, like many mobile games are of low quality, and the story of the mobile game is not intensive enough that the gamer may not be able to keep playing it for hours, and etc. Only several of the students in class pointed out that it is very handy to play mobile games during the interval of classes. Personally, I think the reason why many of the students in our class like more console game than mobile game is because they can mostly be defined as professional gamers, who have spent tons of hours on console for the past years. However, in another game class, COMM 190, the students also have discussed about the same question, but they spend more time on mobile games, just because the mobile platform is more handy. According to the research on the market shares of games, the phones and tablet platform games actually growth in a very rapid speed. One article from Fortune, Mobile game revenues set to overtake console games in 2015, mentions that there are lots of successful games in mobile platform, which contributes to push the mobile game becomes the next billions business.
Here is a ranking list for the top grossing iphone games of United States.
Frankly, I am not a huge fan of mobile game, but I have made a list for myself to try at least three mobile games a week. For now, I have kept some games in my phone and tablet. They are the following:
Clash of Clans
GTA: SA
Botanicula
Reaper
The Room Two
BADLAND
LIMBO
Minecraft
Dumb Ways
Candy Crush Saga
Alto’s Adventure
Alto’s Adventure is a very new game from Toronto’s Snowman studios, and it was released on February 19th. The storyline is like a endless running adventure. The graphic aesthetics of this game is so amazing that sometimes I will get crushed myself because I paid more attention on looking through the beautiful environment.
BADLAND and LIMBO are another two of my favorite games. Frankly, I want to put them together, because I think, too some degrees, they are kind of similar. Both of them are very interesting puzzle games. And just like the situation I have mentioned for Alto’s Adventure. BADLAND and LIMBO both have very intricate backgrounds that will almost distract you from how stunning they are.
Back to the topic, when you google the market share of the mobile games, you will not only get the diagram of the market share, also you will be able to see many journals publish the article about the prediction of mobile game revenues will overtake console games in the future. And I am not sure whether this prediction will come true or not, but we have to admit that the mobile games market is growing, which includes that the social games market is growing on the mobile platform. Many common gamers loves mobile game, because this sort of game is of high social interactivity.
Hi John, Thanks for your reply and the information you have provided. How can the mobile game companies make profits is very interesting topic to look into. But what really surprised me is that most of the students in the IST446 do not play mobile games so often. The reason is very clear that on one side it is because most of us are more like console game players. One the other hand, many of the mobile games have very boring background stories and not so interesting mechanics.
And why I still question that will the mobile game industry will be the next billion business is that I did not so many of the fellow students in class show much interests on it. Comparatively, with the dream of to be a game designer in the future, I believe that most of the students prefer to develop the AAA console games.
Currently, the mobile games industry is developing in a very rapid speed, and the social game is developing based one the flourish of mobile games. Last Friday, the whole class spent over half an hour to play some social games on Facebook. Frankly, I have never played any games on Facebook, and after the first attempt, I felt really disappointed on this sort of game. For example, when playing League of Angels, I do not even need to do anything, the avatar will complete the whole competition by himself. League of Angels is just a representative of social game, and I believe this industry demands more responsible designers to make more high quality games.
Sorry, made that first post to make sure that I was making links correctly…
Just to clear up the question you posed in the title of this article, mobile games are already at this point a billion dollar industry depending on where you look. If we’re looking at market caps (the total stock value offering of a given corporation), King.com, alone is worth about 5.5 billion, while Supercell has been valued at about 3. I didn’t bother to actually confirm that, though. In any case, I’d say there’s pretty damning evidence that mobile gaming is a billion dollar industry as it stands.
While looking around for that information I found some investor information that’s available on King.com‘s website. The earning’s report can be found here. What I think is so interesting about it, and I think you might as well, is how comparable King.com‘s profit’s are compared to EA‘s which can be found here . King.com had a significantly higher revenue in 2014, but less Net income. Either way, 2 billion in earnings is fucking unbelievable for a company so significantly smaller than EA. But on the other side of that is the profitability of EA.