Mobile Gaming Still Isn't the Giant We Thought it Would Be

The Mobile gaming market is growing year after year, with investment doubling every few years we expect to see some huge games. Yet until recently few mobile games have ventured beyond the confines of casual experiences.

In the past Nintendo dominated mobile gaming, selling more mobile playing devices, DS, 3DS and Gameboy consoles than anyone else. But in 2012 the app game market, Andriod and iOS generated more income than Nintendo or Sony’s portable gaming devices combined.

What’s in store for the future of mobile gaming and will we ever get the same experience from our phones or tablets that we have from consoles and PCs?

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In 2013, half of all American adults have smartphones that are ready to play games off the shelf. Opening up a huge potential market for game and app developers alike.

Investment has followed suit, with mobile companies springing up all over the globe. By comparison, investment in Mobile software development, including gaming and apps has 100 times more investment than console gaming in the beginning of 2013.

Mobile gaming investment in 2013 hovered around $200 million dollars each quarter, most of it going into making new companies. Some of the first and biggest companies, like Zynga have been struggling to keep players and have massively restructured and scaled back repeatedly in their short history.

With so many free options for casual gamers how do companies leverage this huge investment capital to create income?

Mobile games make most of their money off advertising, being paid about $0.30 for every thousands impressions, or they can sell in-game items. For example CSR Racing makes about $12 million a month in just virtual car sales and improvements in game.

So called ‘free-to-play’ games offer free downloads but limited playability if gamers do not spend real-world cash on upgrading their characters. This gives players the chance to level-up quickly within the game, but for a price.

Earlier this year Supercell launched its Clash of the Clans game and its been shooting up ever since. Creating the fastest-growing game company ever with 8.5 million daily players generating $2.4 million every day.

In comparison World of Warcraft has about 9.6 million users a day and approximately $150 Million a month. As companies keep releasing smash-hits on mobile, their lower development time and high profits are making it hard for big companies like Blizzard to ignore.

While the majority of mobile games are casual, meaning that they require very little introduction, usually don’t have much of a storyline and can be picked up and put down at just about any time. The casual games are the ones that generate all the income. Candy Crush Saga for instance bring is $632,867 a day despite being fee to play.

Being that casual games bring in the most income that’s what is mostly in development, will we ever see a rich, in depth experience on our phones?

Major developers have been trying to bridge the gap between the mobile world and the world of console and PC AAA titles; the port for XCOM: Enemy Unknown for example is more expensive than its app-store competition but offers nearly the same experience as the console game.

Likewise bringing older and much-loved titles back to the mainstream have been successful. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is another port that’s not likely to bring in too many new users but at least let a great game be available to the masses.

An emerging reality is that mobile games may never reach the level of narrative and story depth that PC or console games can. They may not ever have a completely immersive experience but should they?

With a game that’s, most likely, on your phone and played on bathroom breaks and commutes is the current state of casual mobile gaming good enough for you? Do we really want to be experiencing moving gameplay experiences while hiding out in the bathroom?

Hardcore gamers will not be replacing their consoles with a new iPhones yet but new console titles are looking to add complements to their major titles with second screen experiences to let gamers customize the game they will be playing as soon as they get home.

Battlefield 4 has added a Battlelog feature that not only keeps players up to date on current stats and scores but also allows you to tweak your class and weapons and study maps to that when you get back to the game you come with a plan.

Battlelog is one way to keep gamers playing their console games while not at their hardware and not giving them a chance to play other games.

Your next mobile phone may not be as powerful as next-gen consoles yet they’ll still be powerful enough to run Halo, BioShock, Call of Duty or any other graphically heavy AAA title from at least the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era.

With connectivity via HDMI cables, Apple’s Airplay or Android’s Miracast standards, you’ll be able to put your small screen experience on your television very easily. This also completely sidesteps an entire generation of Android powered consoles, like the OUYA, that started launching this year for your home.

In the long term mobile gaming will win out, why hasn’t it happened sooner? The technology of smartphones is increasing far faster than PCs or consoles, and because of the huge amount of easily reachable customers they’re going to continue to outsell everything in sight. Most new computer users around the world will own their first in the form of a smartphone, so while the number of PC and consoles users will experience only modest growth, phones are going to exponentially increase.

Mobile gaming may have not reached the ivory towers of intelligent and emotional games but as time goes one chances are that everything will because what we refer now to, as mobile. Developers who want to make great games will still have to make the sacrifices to do so, we hope though that through all the one-off casual games that those intelligent and engaging games will make it through.