Chazore said:
Technically all of gaming has lost to phones, we've all lost to the average joe, the casual user if you will, an everyday person who has some time to play a few puzzles but also pop some change towards the game each time they play it which makes the end user insanely rich, if we look at the size of the mobile gaming userbase and total profits then the entire industry has lost to the crowd that was once a part of the Wii, this happens with many different industries these days, especially when it;s easier now to look at one crowd and then another to easily see who's the new/old minority/majority. |
But are those userbases (core gamers/traditional gamers vs mobile gamers) in the same demographic subset? Or rather should they be considered as part of that? I think not. When the behaviors, desires, and goals of one group differ so radically from another, grouping them together into a subheading of the "general gaming market" or some such is not useful. What I am saying I suppose is have we lost to them or are they a totally separate, neighboring market that has only recently developed around new technology and only ever used traditional devises for lack of better means to satisfy their needs/wants. I go with the latter. And I think most companies also recognize this.
Also, while the mobile market makes it possible to make a lot by spending a little, it is also a massive gamble. Popularity is so unpredictable and trends move so fast it's hard to find success. You could produce a game and make oodles of cash. Or you could produce a game that is actually better than most of the competition only to have it rot in irrelevancy for no quantifiable reason than bad luck. And the mobile platform limits you because of how the race to the bottom price has driven the perceived value of all mobile games through the floor, limiting what you can charge for any given game. Basically, you have to bank on freemium revenue (big risk) or bank on selling massive quantities at very low prices (again a big risk).
Basically, all of those two paragraphs to simply say I don't think this arbitrary "mobile vs ttradition" cage match the media plays up is really an accurate reflection of the realities of either market.
