I was thinking of blogging about this before, but then I read an article that basically proved my point (for Dutch speakers: this one). Basically: gaming on mobile among children nearly doubles in 2 years (from 44 to 82%). My own motivation is in my nephews. Aged 5 and 8 (or 6 and 9? I can't exactly keep up with their birthdays), they love games. They're avid soccer players, have a chest full of boardgames, boxes full of lego, a wiiu, a PS4 and a tablet. The latter one sees the most play (although that might be because we tend to see each other at my girlfriend's parents, aka: their grandparents). The youngest one recently won a science fair project, and blew all the winnings on probably the largest tablet in the store. Of course I was the one who had to install "that one game with the boxes" (tsuro) on it.
In and of itself, it's nothing out of the ordinary yet. As an ICT guy, what was fascinating was more that was missing: a traditional personal computer. Back in the zeroties, this would be unthinkable. You needed one to get on the internet, and you needed the internet because everyone and their mum had it. But as much as I love home computers, I can't deny that it's past its prime. In terms of functionality, windows has hardly improved since XP. And as far as PC games are concerned, it is showing that Moore's law is slowing down. I mean...when talking about the most demanding games, GTA 5 and witcher 3 are still among the first to pop up, and they're over three years old at this point. And I'm glad for this: I'm old enough to remember the time that upgrading your PC every 2 years was considered conservative. As it stands, the only ones still upgrading their PC's (when it's not broken) are hardcore gamers. But I feel it's losing in terms of percentage.
Things look very different when considering smartphones and tablets. Yes, the google play store has a reputation of freemium games with hidden gambling mechanics. The touchpad is yet to be taken seriously by gamers*. The question is whether that reputation is still deserved. On the hardware front, there are many types of bluetooth controllers that pair with your devices smoothly (and in some cases: also hold these). Recent android versions support these immediately, and the list of games that support these is steadily growing. Nvidia sort of pioneered the market space with their shield lineup, but nowadays "gaming smartphones" isn't even a contradiction anymore (though I'm rather skeptical in what it really offers aside a nuclear green side color). And that all gets backed up by actual android-based gaming devices like the GPD XD(+), pyra and the JXD lineup.
Of course this all wouldn't mean much without software. This too has evolved quite a bit from snake or angry birds. Android supports vulkan since version 7. Unreal and unity work fine on smartphone. The result is, as you could guess, adoption by indies and tiptoe-ing by AAA-studios. Let's see...on android you've got ports of indie classics like this war of mine, limbo, telltale's games, Munch's oddyssey, don't starve, baldur's gate 2 and the older rockstar games. Then there are known AAA-titles like half life 2, injustice, doom 3, Tomb raider and a need for speed game, and that's not even pointing out ports of fortnite and playerunknown battlegrounds. It's in no way a match for the 'big three', but the line-up is growing.
Take it how you will, but the fact that gaming engines now have simple ways to compile for android and iOS has its influence. Steam finds many of its new games containing very large fonts and lack the use of the right mouse button. This has people complaining, but valve just makes use of this: they release the steam link app (not to be confused with steam link, which is), that lets you stream your steam games to your phone.
Of course, you can't talk about mobile gaming without mentioning the switch. I'll be honest: I had no idea it'd become such a success. And I still find it hard to believe, considering that its main selling point is being a wiiu you can play further from your television. One can obviously point to the quality of the software, but it's not enough to explain the success (the wiiu has gems as well). And seeing how at least half the users use it in offline mode**, it's safe to say that it is at least the potential for mobility that sells the system.
As I've pointed out in an earlier blog post, I've (re)discovered board games on mobile devices. That has lead me to install appsales, which tracks sales on apps. That, in turn, brought a lot of great games on my radar that I didn't knew existed (wait...since when is Munch's Oddyssey on here?), or of which I was stunned by the sheer quality (Rima has A LOT of resemblance to Ori and the blind forest...and it ran fine on my nvidia shield tablet+ipega controller).
The result of that: I ended up buying a gpd XD+ because I wanted to play more games than my tablet has room for (this was just a day before the steam link app announcement, so it's already busy paying for itself
).
I'll probably review this device at one point (hopefully today). But I have to stress that I'm in no way dissatisfied with the gpd win I got last year. Rather the contrary: that device's quality is the main reason I'm buying it.
That wraps things up for now...I'll keep you informed...
EDIT: hmm...I posted this pondering a bit too soon. In the reactions of the Asus ROG, someone posted a very interesting article: click me. According to a gaming marketing intelligence company called Newzoo, mobile gaming accounted for 42 percent of total gaming revenues last year. FORTY-TWO PERCENT! As you can guess, that's a larger number than consoles or PC gaming. And while I think that rog phone looks terrible, those numbers illustrate why it got built in the first place.
EDIT2: googled around a bit for confirmation, and found that the predictions for this year are even "worse": 51% of spendings on mobile. Christ...that's seriously impressive. Thus far I didn't think google or apple really fit to make a presence at E3, but at this rate they pretty much should have been there. (...or even better: it'd be better if the ACTUAL largest players of the gaming industry are NOT there ).
*despite their sometimes toxic opinions, gamers aren't wrong on this: the physical movement on a joystick, D-pad or plain buttons creates a better player<->avatar connection than statically sliding over glass ever will. However: this is only really matters for games that require navigation or twitch- or reflex-based games.
**sorry...I forgot the source on this one.
In and of itself, it's nothing out of the ordinary yet. As an ICT guy, what was fascinating was more that was missing: a traditional personal computer. Back in the zeroties, this would be unthinkable. You needed one to get on the internet, and you needed the internet because everyone and their mum had it. But as much as I love home computers, I can't deny that it's past its prime. In terms of functionality, windows has hardly improved since XP. And as far as PC games are concerned, it is showing that Moore's law is slowing down. I mean...when talking about the most demanding games, GTA 5 and witcher 3 are still among the first to pop up, and they're over three years old at this point. And I'm glad for this: I'm old enough to remember the time that upgrading your PC every 2 years was considered conservative. As it stands, the only ones still upgrading their PC's (when it's not broken) are hardcore gamers. But I feel it's losing in terms of percentage.
Things look very different when considering smartphones and tablets. Yes, the google play store has a reputation of freemium games with hidden gambling mechanics. The touchpad is yet to be taken seriously by gamers*. The question is whether that reputation is still deserved. On the hardware front, there are many types of bluetooth controllers that pair with your devices smoothly (and in some cases: also hold these). Recent android versions support these immediately, and the list of games that support these is steadily growing. Nvidia sort of pioneered the market space with their shield lineup, but nowadays "gaming smartphones" isn't even a contradiction anymore (though I'm rather skeptical in what it really offers aside a nuclear green side color). And that all gets backed up by actual android-based gaming devices like the GPD XD(+), pyra and the JXD lineup.
Of course this all wouldn't mean much without software. This too has evolved quite a bit from snake or angry birds. Android supports vulkan since version 7. Unreal and unity work fine on smartphone. The result is, as you could guess, adoption by indies and tiptoe-ing by AAA-studios. Let's see...on android you've got ports of indie classics like this war of mine, limbo, telltale's games, Munch's oddyssey, don't starve, baldur's gate 2 and the older rockstar games. Then there are known AAA-titles like half life 2, injustice, doom 3, Tomb raider and a need for speed game, and that's not even pointing out ports of fortnite and playerunknown battlegrounds. It's in no way a match for the 'big three', but the line-up is growing.
Take it how you will, but the fact that gaming engines now have simple ways to compile for android and iOS has its influence. Steam finds many of its new games containing very large fonts and lack the use of the right mouse button. This has people complaining, but valve just makes use of this: they release the steam link app (not to be confused with steam link, which is), that lets you stream your steam games to your phone.
Of course, you can't talk about mobile gaming without mentioning the switch. I'll be honest: I had no idea it'd become such a success. And I still find it hard to believe, considering that its main selling point is being a wiiu you can play further from your television. One can obviously point to the quality of the software, but it's not enough to explain the success (the wiiu has gems as well). And seeing how at least half the users use it in offline mode**, it's safe to say that it is at least the potential for mobility that sells the system.
As I've pointed out in an earlier blog post, I've (re)discovered board games on mobile devices. That has lead me to install appsales, which tracks sales on apps. That, in turn, brought a lot of great games on my radar that I didn't knew existed (wait...since when is Munch's Oddyssey on here?), or of which I was stunned by the sheer quality (Rima has A LOT of resemblance to Ori and the blind forest...and it ran fine on my nvidia shield tablet+ipega controller).
The result of that: I ended up buying a gpd XD+ because I wanted to play more games than my tablet has room for (this was just a day before the steam link app announcement, so it's already busy paying for itself
).I'll probably review this device at one point (hopefully today). But I have to stress that I'm in no way dissatisfied with the gpd win I got last year. Rather the contrary: that device's quality is the main reason I'm buying it.
That wraps things up for now...I'll keep you informed...
EDIT: hmm...I posted this pondering a bit too soon. In the reactions of the Asus ROG, someone posted a very interesting article: click me. According to a gaming marketing intelligence company called Newzoo, mobile gaming accounted for 42 percent of total gaming revenues last year. FORTY-TWO PERCENT! As you can guess, that's a larger number than consoles or PC gaming. And while I think that rog phone looks terrible, those numbers illustrate why it got built in the first place.
EDIT2: googled around a bit for confirmation, and found that the predictions for this year are even "worse": 51% of spendings on mobile. Christ...that's seriously impressive. Thus far I didn't think google or apple really fit to make a presence at E3, but at this rate they pretty much should have been there.
(...or even better: it'd be better if the ACTUAL largest players of the gaming industry are NOT there ).*despite their sometimes toxic opinions, gamers aren't wrong on this: the physical movement on a joystick, D-pad or plain buttons creates a better player<->avatar connection than statically sliding over glass ever will. However: this is only really matters for games that require navigation or twitch- or reflex-based games.
**sorry...I forgot the source on this one.
