Bucky Seifert on 13/11/2018 at 19:51
Speaking as someone who works in the industry, this is my personal two cents on whenever someone says the future of gaming is mobile.
"Kind of."
There is no denying that the mobile market is huge and continues to grow. It's the most accessible platform for gaming that has ever existed, because almost everyone has a smart phone now. This combined with the free to play model, it makes it very easy for people to get these games. Plus, there is no denying the revenue potential of mobile games. Whether we like it or not, the mobile market is here to stay, and companies are going to start investing more resources into capitalizing on this market.
That being said, the idea that mobile is the only future gaming has is incredibly short sighted. While the core audience will always be dwarfed by the casual audience, that audience will still always be there. There will always be many people who want the more traditional PC/console gaming experiences, and perhaps don't even have any interest in mobile gaming, and this market will always have great revenue potential. The numbers back it up, too. Some of the biggest hits of the last two years that have been traditional single player focused titles that have sold at least 5 million units. These titles include Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mario Odyssey, God of War, and Spiderman. And on the PC end of things, the fairly niche CRPG Divinity Original Sin 2 has sold at least 2 million copies on Steam, not to mention runaway indie successes like Undertale and Cuphead. And, lest we forget, the currently single player only Red Dead Redemption 2 has made over 750 million dollars in it's first weekend, the biggest opening weekend in the history of the *entire* entertainment industry.
So, basically, yes, mobile is a market that AAA companies are going to try and capitalize on, and it makes complete sense to do so. To get onto the hot button issue, I'm not the least bit surprised that Blizzard has decided to make a mobile Diablo game, despite the fact that the PR handling is the worst I've ever seen the company. But, to assume that more traditional games no longer have the future, I think, is incredibly foolish and short sighted as it's neglecting a very sizable, and very profitable, market.
voodoo47 on 13/11/2018 at 20:16
which is very capable of showing the middle finger to anyone who thinks otherwise, and go get their fix elsewhere, I might add.
Bucky Seifert on 13/11/2018 at 21:19
Quote Posted by voodoo47
which is very capable of showing the middle finger to anyone who thinks otherwise, and go get their fix elsewhere, I might add.
Indeedy. With the current Diablo SNAFU I have to imagine game likes Path of Exile and Torchlight are starting to see some growth in player count.
ZylonBane on 13/11/2018 at 22:57
Who are these people who seriously say that mobile is the future of gaming, so we may laugh at them?
Bucky Seifert on 14/11/2018 at 00:00
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Who are these people who seriously say that mobile is the future of gaming, so we may laugh at them?
The CEO of Konami claimed it in 2015. The same company that had the ingredients of Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro, Norman Reedus, the Silent Hill licence, FOX Engine, and Akira Yamaoka and still decided to cancel Silent Hills, because I guess they don't like guaranteed hits.
Starker on 14/11/2018 at 01:26
Well, what did you expect from a humble Pachinko machine maker?
demagogue on 14/11/2018 at 02:16
There's at least two different ways you can understand "the future", the future market and future influence on gaming/culture. Sometimes they're the same game/genre, like Doom or Minecraft, but sometimes smaller games have a much greater influence on how future games are made, but the market goes another direction.
Then it's just a matter about what you care about. I care about the influence of a genre on how to think about games & the culture, so for me "the future of gaming" is more in line with this walking sim & immersive sim renaissance we've been having, but I would acknowledge that's not the future trend of the market.
EvaUnit02 on 14/11/2018 at 02:48
Mobile gaming in its current form is tainted fruit. It's about exploitative monetisation over making genuinely good games.
Big publishers trying to get core gamers to move over to mobile by baiting them with adaptations of core gamer franchises won't work, at least in the West. The casuals/non-gamers who play the glorified slot machine games on mobile aren't some great untapped market for core gamer titles either. I.e. your grandma who plays Candy Crush was likely never going to be interested in Diablo.
The real future of the hardcore gaming market in the West is likely going to be streaming or multi-platform games with cross-platform multiplayer and/or cross-platform progression. I.e. the same game experience which can be enjoyed across a whole score of devices. You can already see the intended effect with Fortnite or even Nintendo Switch. This is NOT the same as the current mobile market of casual audience cash-grab trash, but it is adjacent.
henke on 14/11/2018 at 06:33
If mobile was going to be the future of gaming, it would've happened by now. I feel like some people were claiming it was gonna be the future when smartphones and tablets first were becoming huge, but I haven't heard it in years now.
Personally I had a brief period of infatuation with mobile gaming after I bought my first iPad, wondering what possibilities touchscreen-based gaming might hold, but that quickly petered out. There's still a few gems here and there. Florence is one of my favourite games of the year, and it's possible I've spent more time (while I was supposed to be working) playing Desert Golfing and holedown than any other games this year. But mobile games can't provide the same kind of experiences PC/console/VR can, and even if they could you'd still want to play those games on a bigger screen when you're at home.
EvaUnit02 on 14/11/2018 at 07:52
Quote Posted by henke
If mobile was going to be the future of gaming, it would've happened by now. I feel like some people were claiming it was gonna be the future when smartphones and tablets first were becoming huge, but I haven't heard it in years now.
This is exactly what a lot of AAA publishers thought at the tail end of the Xbox 360/PS3 generation. I.e. They believed that home consoles were dying and that mobile + service-based online PC games were going to be the future. PS4 selling several million units (eg (
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps4-sales-reach-18-5-million-units/1100-6424475/) 18.5 mill by Jan 2015, so about 14 months) within a short amount of time caught a lot of them off guard.
Hence Square Enix rumoured to have wanted Just Cause 3 to be an online PC game and the reasoning behind making Hitman 2016 episodic. Also Microsoft pushing their 1st party studios to making online games like Sea of Thieves and Fable Legends.