Is Mobile Gaming Taking Over the Gaming Industry?

[phalk]

Your article is at least 2 years late. This is so 2010-11ish.

The 3DS sales have already recovered and are doing fine right now.

I don't think it deserves to be on gbatemp news page. Seriously. You, as an individual just don't have time to be a gamer anymore, and you find that smartphones allow you to still play games when you normally wouldn't be able.
I have an smartphone, and I don't pay or even download any game into it. Why? Because I don't like that kind of gaming.
And I seriously hope the big gaming companies don't start thinking that if they stop producing the games I like I would buy their smartphone games. I wouldn't. They would just lose a customer.

Your whole article misses a crucial point: The audience of those two "sides" are different. The people who are into the smartphone gaming craze isn't the same as the console gaming people. And the console gaming people usually hate that kind of smartphone game. Hell, I even hate playing on a smartphone. It's awful. It wasn't made for that.

Anyway, I don't think console gaming is going anywhere. As I said, this post is something that came up with full force years ago, and it's yet to be proven right.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

only you have to add the expensive memory cards to that $200 price tag and it's no different from a mid range smartphone, and even if a high end smartphone is more expensive it can do more than a vita and is not a closed OS like sonys handhelds are so that is a huge plus, memory for smartphones are really cheap which is another huge advantage.

>$500 difference
>"W-well, what about the memory card prices huh? A-and it doesn't do smartphone stuff! It's almost like it's not a smartphone!"

yeah okay

 

[Chocolina]

Smartphones are high-performance, low-wattage miniature personal media computers. They're not just a "threat" to handheld/console gaming, but also on the road of becoming many people's computer/laptop replacements.

The fuck you need Snapdragon 800 or Tegra 4 chipsets for other than gaming and emulator-related gaming?

Now I'll give it to you that a quality of gaming still exists on GBA, NDS, PSP, and PSV that mobile, in its infancy, still hasn't came close to yet, but you can see that developers on mobile have no incentive to give us Nintendo/Console quality experience yet. Game developers are companies, and companies are motivated by creativity, but not as motivated as they are with making money. And theres more money to be made in developing games with in-app purchases. IAPs make for over 70% of the revenue generated by mobile games. The quality of gaming experience diminishes with IAP-systems most mobile games have in place, but on the other hand, it makes games either incredibly cheap, or free. There are several games on iOS and Android that range from $0.00 to $5.00, most of which are $3 or less. You know what 25 cents got me during Google's 25 cent sale? Uh.... Asphalt 7, Horn, World of Goo. You know what $1-$3 Got me? Asplault 8, a superb Rayman game, Survival Craft, Giana Sisters HD remake, Scribblenauts, Clash of heroes HD remake, Crayon Physics, Frozen Synaps, Revolt, HD version of dreamcast version, Finding Teddy, Super brothers, The Room, The Bards Tale, Need for Speed MW, and a whole bunch of other crap. Sure Luigi's Mansion and Fire Emblem are a shit-ton better, but Luigi's Mansion and Fire Emblem aren't less than $3. You know what $3 gets you on the eShop? Shit-micro games that make Angry Birds look like Ocarina of Time.

Even if Pokemon X and Y turn out to be the ultimate handheld game, $40-$45 on Nintendo or Vita doesn't go no where near as far as it does on Android/iOS

 

[phalk]

I think most of people don't see that most of this new smartphone gamers are a new kind of customers. They are people who weren't gamers before. And I think it's fine.

Consoles and handhelds aren't "losing" people to those games. They are only losing the people they would already lose (due to normal circunstances, like, no time to play etc).

 

[Foxi4]

I don't even own a smartphone or tablet, I do own all the current gen consoles (minus the vita). I couldn't imagine some cheezy android games replacing console games any time soon.

What if console-grade games were released on smartphones - would that sway you over? What if the smartphone had console-grade controls? Because both are coming our way if mobile gaming continues to evolve in the direction it's evolving in. We're already seeing a lot of Android-based consoles on the market - that's one step away from adding a GSM module to the mix.

only you have to add the expensive memory cards to that $200 price tag and it's no different from a mid range smartphone.

Yeah, every mid-range smartphone has a GPU surpassing the iPad 3's (SGX543MP4+) and a quad-core Cortex A9 CPU, not just the top-range ones! That, and embedding VRAM is totally a common practice among smartphone manufacturers. And all that is always for less than $200, not at all well over $500 for equivalent specs!

and even if a high end smartphone is more expensive it can do more than a vita and is not a closed OS like sonys handhelds are so that is a huge plus.

>"Closed OS"
>FreeBSD
>Developer licenses starting from a petty $99 a year for PSMobile
>One of the cheapest devkits on the market for fully fledged development if you don't want to use Mono and PSMobile

Okay.

memory for smartphones are really cheap which is another huge advantage.

>Buys very expensive smartphone
>Is a cheapskate when it comes to memory cards

Okay.

I suppose all the Indie developers Sony swayed to their side recently are all wrong.

 

[Wisenheimer]

only you have to add the expensive memory cards to that $200 price tag and it's no different from a mid range smartphone, and even if a high end smartphone is more expensive it can do more than a vita and is not a closed OS like sonys handhelds are so that is a huge plus, memory for smartphones are really cheap which is another huge advantage.

the mobile gaming market is getting better, sega make a lot of games for android including square and rockstar so you can get quality games on mobile just not a lot compared to the software support a vita has (only advantage it has really has tbh), mobile gaming is catching up and if sony can see what kind of money it can make for them then i guess it's only going to get better, the specs of phones are increasing at a very fast rate, mobile phones can almost and will soon do ps3 or next gen like graphics in a few years, it will happen, then major players in the gaming industry will have to take notice especially nintendo because they are a major player in the handheld market atm.

like you said, the phones have so much juice with their specs but not a lot of it is used right now, i hope that will change in the future.

A Samsung S3 mini right now will run you a little over $200, but it certainly will not provide you the same CPU and GPU power as what the Vita has right now. The biggest problem with the Vita is that it is locked into that hardware for its entire lifecycle, while you will be able to pick up a Note 2 or S4 in two or three years for $200 (both phones which currently have CPU and GPU power very similar to the Vita). The advantage though is that the Vita is pretty much a gaming-only machine and probably can unload most of the software and provide games direct access to a lot more of the hardware than a typical android app gets.

I think it is going to be more than a few years before phones can do xbox 360 levels of graphics. The XBOX uses a tri-core 3.2 GHZ IBM Power PC chip. Because of heat and power issues, phones and "toy" tablets (obviously we are exempting things such as the Surface Pro) are just not going to see that level of processing power for a while. The same goes for the GPU. Low-power, low heat GPUs are still going to be a lot slower. In fact, on single-threaded applications you would probably see models of Pentium IVs (which were first introduced in 2000) outperform the fastest phone CPUs on the market in standard tests.

But that being said, the kind of hardware in high end phones is pretty impressive. You could write games for many of these higher end devices as nice as you would probably get for the PS II, Gamecube, or XBOX 1.0, and unlike those consoles, you would probably not run into certain limitations, like running out of RAM. YOu might even get some nicer features, such as high resolution graphics (although phone screens are small enough that there probably is no need to run at 1080p). You could probably even push more polygons than some of those origional game-cube titles. And lets face it, that level of quality is more than enough for a portable device.

The VITA basically has chips in it similar to the CPUs and GPUs on the best smartphones today. In five years, top of the line smartphones will be able to push significantly better graphics than the VITA, but to be honest, I think exceeding VITA level graphics are not going to be functionally useful for making better games. The number of polygons that you need on a small screen to look good to the average human is pretty low.

 

[stomp_442]

What if console-grade games were released on smartphones - would that sway you over? What if the smartphone had console-grade controls? Because both are coming our way if mobile gaming continues to evolve in the direction it's evolving in. We're already seeing a lot of Android-based consoles on the market - that's one step away from adding a GSM module to the mix.

Probably not. Unless the major cellular carriers lower their rates. Right now I cannot see paying for an internet connection twice, nor do I need internet on the go. I don't do facebook, twitter, myspace, etc, so I don't need 24/7 internet on my hip or in my pocket.

If there were an android console like a ps3 or 360, then that would be a different story. Haven't they already tried to introduce android type console(s) which failed. But then again, cant you just use xbox live for downloading cheezy games, no android device needed. I don't play many games anymore, but when I do it's not a low budget cap pop type of game, I much prefer console games. When Android has call of duty with motion controls on my 55", I'd be good with that.

I don't think an android device will ever make it into my console collection.

 

[KingVamp]

The VITA basically has chips in it similar to the CPUs and GPUs on the best smartphones today. In five years, top of the line smartphones will be able to push significantly better graphics than the VITA, but to be honest, I think exceeding VITA level graphics are not going to be functionally useful for making better games. The number of polygons that you need on a small screen to look good to the average human is pretty low.

Well, you could always play them on a TV when you get home. Plus they can use that power to make the world(s) bigger and have more content. That is, if there is an increase of devs that want to make original big games on a phones.

 

[Kirito-kun]

Just throwing it out there, the best smartphone GPU, the Andreno 330, is already 3 times more powerful than the GPU in the PS Vita. The PS Vita pushes 50 GFLOPS. The Andreno 330 pushes 150 GFLOPS.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I won't deny that they are having an impact, but until real button controls are the norm on mobile phones and tablets, I seriously doubt they can take over the market. There are specific genres that just don't control well with onscreen controls, and a large amount who would not be satisfied with touch controls on anything but your average casual mobile game.

 

[Foxi4]

Just throwing it out there, the best smartphone GPU, the Andreno 330, is already 3 times more powerful than the GPU in the PS Vita. The PS Vita pushes 50 GFLOPS. The Andreno 330 pushes 150 GFLOPS.

The PSVita is pushing 51.6GFLOPS, the Adreno 330 pushes 129.6GFLOPS. Just a little correction. Also, keep in mind that the PSVita costs around $200 while an Adreno 330-powered smartphone would be literally top-of-the-line - we're talking circa $600 territory here. One would expect three times the performance for three times the price.

This does unveil an interesting trend though. Notice how PC's have superior specs to home consoles and smartphones are starting to become their equivalent against the handheld consoles.

 

[ComeTurismO]

Firstly, I am very impressed with your points, and your argument is valid. Costello has made a good decision making you a reporter, Ryukouki.

My idea about gaming and mobile gaming is that they both are very different from each other. Most of the time, mobile gaming is played when people are outside. Since a major game to the gaming industry is out - GTA V, I would say that the chart went way up after it's release. Mobile gaming and the other type of gaming are in a balanced position.
Again, GOOD JOB.

 

[mrtofu]

deleted

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I think the question is that if the Vita is outclassed in power by mobile phones and thus shouldn't be bought, why buy a 3DS that's outclassed by the Vita?

 

[frogboy]

I think the question is that if the Vita is outclassed in power by mobile phones and thus shouldn't be bought, why buy a 3DS that's outclassed by the Vita?

Nintendo Franchises.

... That's pretty much the only reason I can think of at the moment...

 

[Ryukouki]

Your article is at least 2 years late. This is so 2010-11ish.

The 3DS sales have already recovered and are doing fine right now.

I don't think it deserves to be on gbatemp news page. Seriously. You, as an individual just don't have time to be a gamer anymore, and you find that smartphones allow you to still play games when you normally wouldn't be able.
I have an smartphone, and I don't pay or even download any game into it. Why? Because I don't like that kind of gaming.
And I seriously hope the big gaming companies don't start thinking that if they stop producing the games I like I would buy their smartphone games. I wouldn't. They would just lose a customer.

Your whole article misses a crucial point: The audience of those two "sides" are different. The people who are into the smartphone gaming craze isn't the same as the console gaming people. And the console gaming people usually hate that kind of smartphone game. Hell, I even hate playing on a smartphone. It's awful. It wasn't made for that.

Anyway, I don't think console gaming is going anywhere. As I said, this post is something that came up with full force years ago, and it's yet to be proven right.

Hey there, thanks for your feedback. Is my article late? Yes, it could very much be so. Having said that, I am getting tired of seeing a stagnant portal, and what goes on the front page is not up to you to decide at the present time. A couple years back, I had envisioned a front page portal that was filled with dynamic and unique content. That is why I took this job. I wanted to bring to fruition the vision that myself and several of the staff members had. News on its own, in my opinion, wasn't sustaining the site. The purpose of writing these articles was to generate a healthy discussion that the site very much needs. Based on what I have seen in the past two topics I have posted, this kind of article is actually preferable to what used to get on the front page as of late. I have not seen a standard article posted to the front page recently (something that is not news based) generate as much discussion. In fact, the number of comments to these two threads has far exceeded my own expectations. If it does not fit your ideal as to what you want to see on your front page, then so be it, and I apologize, but you are going to be getting a lot more of that to come.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Before I make my comment - Ryukouki, this is the kind of shit I like seeing on the front page. A nice opinion editorial. Well written, fairly unbiased, just throwing some stuff around for thought. Hope to see more like this.

Anyway, I never really got into this "mobile gaming" phase, fad, whatever you may call it. Portable hendhelds, on the other hand... I have a (pretty damn decent) smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Nexus), a pretty damn decent tablet (ASUS Nexus 7, gen1), I've got a gaming grade desktop, all of the current gen consoles (no WiiU), a good few previous gen consoles, many Nintendo handhelds, and a PSP.

I'm a guy working a part time job at Target in electronics. I work five days a week, usually from 4 to midnight. Tuesday and Wednesday are my free days, where I drive to Newark every other week (if I can) to visit my girlfriend who goes to med school there. Monday and Thursday mornings I have class for almost 2 hours. In the rest of my time, I try to catch up on sleep. It may not sound like I have a lot going on but my time is actually stretched pretty thing, all considered. I -do- have free time here and there but I don't have hours upon hours where I can just sit down a dick around. Every night after work I'll sit down, check up on this place for an hour, sometimes have a beer or two, call my girl, skype my buddy, study up a bit on calc on khanacademy, and then go to bed, usually around 3 AM.

I used to be a big console guy. From the days of the Sega Genesis, I've moved to the N64, the GC, Xbox Classic, 360, and Wii. I have a PS3 and don't use it, and my other consoles see little love nowadays too.

I used to be a big portable guy. From the days of the GB Color, I've moved to the GBA, SP, DS Lite, and now an Ambassador 3DS, which I use heavily. I've got more games than I can count for the thing (21, iirc). Hell, I haven't even actually beaten any of them, but I've played a bit of a good few of them. Some day, I'll have time.

I used to be a big computer gaming guy. From the days that my parents had a Windows 98 SE computer, I've moved to my own custom built rig, which may not be top tier by todays standards, but when I did my last major upgrade to it, it did have some pretty hot shit for the time. Maybe not top tier then either, but it was pretty good up there. I've put quite a bit of money into this, and even more (maybe... I hope not) into my Steam library. The amount of unplayed games I have is almost sickening. But just recently, I reinstalled GTA4 and I've been playing that a bit. I had the flu the past week, and I've made considerable progress into the game in that time.

But I've got a calc test coming up in two days, so I've got to study like the world is ending.

All of that is well and good, but that doesn't pertain much to the article, huh. Well, then let me continue by saying that in the era of gaming on the go, I'm lost. I use my smartphone for, honestly, very little other than being a phone and a web browser. I use it to stream Pandora to my car headunit, and I bought Torque, an OBDII reader app as well. As many paid games as I have on my GPlay account, you won't be finding one on my phone. Plenty of other stuff - banking and finances and social media. Oh, I've got Retroarch, for that time I was testing games on that against the Android TV stick I have.

My "Smart Gaming" has been relegated to my tablet, which, unfortunately, you won't find a charge on. I tried, oh believe me I really, really did. I've got a bunch of paid games. I buy all of the Humble Android Bundles. I bought SixAxisController so I could use a PS3 controller on it. But that's too much hassle. Plugging or syncing a mouse and keyboard to it is too much hassle and too cumbersome. Touch screen gaming is WAY too clunky for me to use comfortably. I tried, I really, really did, but my tablet is just sitting on a shelf right now.

I just don't have the time, nor the will, which is a damn shame.

But you'll never see my 3DS powered off unless there's something wrong with it that I'm fixing. I haven't played with it much the past month (likely coincidentally lost interest in it since I fixed the shoulders), but before that, for the better part of 6 months, if not longer, I took it with me every single day to work, every single day no matter where I went, even if it was to the dollar store or Taco Bell, just so I could maybe get a street pass. I went from downloaded games to games off of my DSTWO to playing SMT4 religiously.

I may not have the will to play Sonic on a touch screen or flick a bird towards some pigs, but I will always have a few minutes to slay a group of demons in SMT4 on my 3DS.

 

[sporkonomix]

The smartphone market is only a threat to the mainstream, casual interests. It's a market full of trends and sales bubbles. It consisted of a race to the bottom in terms of price, and now the majority of the competition is all marketing.

Smartphones lack buttons or -- when they do -- ergonomic interfaces that make handhelds and console controllers comfortable. They run on poor operating systems (or in Android's case, a poor userland), are written in poor programming environments not meant for games (or with equally poor prebuilt engines), and offer nothing for dedicated, single-player gamers that justify the price of the hardware. The mainstream is a great market for them, because it's always getting new people, they're an easy sale, and it doesn't matter if they stick around for more games because most companies that develop for smartphones never count on hitting big on more than one game. They *know* they only have one shot at success; it has to catch on socially and be fun to play when you're bored. That's the entire crux of smartphone gaming. Convenient diversions from the boring parts of life, entertaining people that don't know what to do with themselves when there's nothing to do.

That market is much like Hollywood movies. Word of mouth will spread about new game X that's so totally cool, and people will get others to play because there will no doubt be some bullshit Facebook-like friend system, a pay-to-win micro-transaction system, and repetitive gameplay that offers constant progressions to encourage psychological addiction. It will spread like wildfire for a few months and fade from the public eye. By then, the dev has made their money, considered it a success, and hits the drawing board with another game, to hopefully be in the spotlight again. Games do not succeed on smartphones because they are good; they succeed when they are socially subversive and have cultural appeal. They are literally social games for impatient or unintelligent people with impulse control issues.

In short, smartphone gaming should be considered a boon to serious gamers. It's a way to quarantine mainstream and casual interests, so the real games can appear on real interfaces and real systems. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing console and handheld gaming returning to niche status while smartphone games become the popular place for shitty games to crop up.

 

[Hop2089]

Depends on region, in the West, mobile gaming has not taken over and I doubt it ever will, but in the East and not just Japan either, it has taken over. Watching that Asia games business summit TGS livestream made me cringe and depressed at how all of these developers from Asia were solely focused on smartphone and browser games, it was sad to see such decent developers selling their souls to a shit market. For some countries like Thailand, mobile is already nearly 100% of the gaming market.

For those who seen the Pre-TGS Sony Conference, did you notice a moe character you probably didn't recognize? If so, then I'll tell you where she came from, she's from a browser game and a damn good one called Kantai Collection and it got a Vita adaptation announcement yesterday not to mention an anime, 2 manga, and 3 novels. Also, these games if they're a spinoff can end up more popular than the main series case in point Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls, while good, this doesn't help matters and makes developers think that putting their games on mobile only will equal instant and massive popularity. I only gave examples of the good social games, however 99% of them are still massive piles of shit that are saturating the market, and if this continues game quality will suffer and gamers outside of Asia will be deprived of the games we love that are made there, because we all know they put draconian region locking on them.

 

[Ryukouki]

Before I make my comment - Ryukouki, this is the kind of shit I like seeing on the front page. A nice opinion editorial. Well written, fairly unbiased, just throwing some stuff around for thought. Hope to see more like this.

...long portion of post...

Thank you! This type of stuff has been what I've been envisioning for the 'Temp since a couple years ago. If nobody's gonna be able to do that job, then I really want to fill those shoes. And hah, it's pretty difficult to balance all the factors into a decent, as unbiased as possible article. I have to take into account the sensitivity of issues that I write about, yet at the same time, I need to be able to create a viable discussion without catering too much to any one side. Tough stuff, especially since I would be displaying it on the front page, which is almost the most important part of the site. For instance, I could easily do an article about how terrible Nintendo is or how much I hate Grand Theft Auto, and I could back that up with the best supporting evidence, yet I would still find myself lynched because of my opinion. I try very hard to avoid such issues (biases) and make it so that I'm not really super supportive or super against any one subject. Back when I used to write for another video gaming media site, I used to do similar things too. I have to say that they helped me redefine my writing style. And don't worry, this kind of work is going to be on the front page quite frequently.

By the way, you also sound exactly like me. I used to be huge on consoles, and now, I'm getting whipped up the wazoo with school work.

EDIT: I should totally make this editorial a series and title it Food for Thought...