The Key Trends Shaping the Mobile Gaming Industry

Paul Sinclair • Jul 21, 2011 • Comments ()

Multi-player is where it's at with all gaming platforms. Whether mobile, PC or console, gamers increasingly demand the multi-player feature with their favourite games, more-so because the addition of the human element and the ability to go head-to-head against your buddies makes things all the mroe exciting.

"It is almost a cliché to discuss the importance of integrating social networking components into gaming, but consumers have not lost interest," writes Hulkower. "They also enjoy multiplayer games for their competitive and social aspects. Despite their digital medium, 'social' and 'multiplayer' signify human interaction. Young adults, in particular, have grown up with computers, Internet, instant messaging/texting, and Facebook, and want to connect while gaming."

Indeed, the advent cooperative gameplay with games such as Mario Kart Wii or Call of Duty Black Ops, as taken multi-player gameplay to another level. We feel this will become an increasing feature in mobile gaming. Here's a list of coop gameplay video games.

While the big guns such as Sony, EA Mobile and GameLoft may dominate mobile game publisher revenue, the nature of the tech sector now with its openness and removal of barriers to entry, has allowed independent game studios to flourish. For example, Rovio's Angry Birds was the most downloaded game in Apple's App Store in 2010 -- in June, the game hit 1 million downloads per day. Not to mention our own friends Open Emotion Studios are making forays into mobile gaming with their own unique titles for the PSP.

[Via Mashable]

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Here's an interesting article from Erica Swallow, an associate editor at Mashable. Taking research done by Mintel and eMarketer's on the US mobile gaming industry, she cites that at \$898 million in 2010, mobile device sales have doubled since 2005, and projected forecasts are a massive \$1.6 billion by 2015. With this economic backdrop, she outlines some of the key trends driving the mobile gaming industry. Out of the 5 main trends cited, we would place emphasis on the following; the freemium business model (in which game sales are made up of in-game purchases only), the increasing demand for multi-player features, the removal of barriers to entry and the rise of start ups.\n\nMulti-player is where it's at with all gaming platforms. Whether mobile, PC or console, gamers increasingly demand the multi-player feature with their favourite games, more-so because the addition of the human element and the ability to go head-to-head against your buddies makes things all the mroe exciting.\n\n

\n\n\"It is almost a cliché to discuss the importance of integrating social networking components into gaming, but consumers have not lost interest,\" writes Hulkower. \"They also enjoy multiplayer games for their competitive and social aspects. Despite their digital medium, 'social' and 'multiplayer' signify human interaction. Young adults, in particular, have grown up with computers, Internet, instant messaging/texting, and Facebook, and want to connect while gaming.\"\n\n

\n\nIndeed, the advent cooperative gameplay with games such as Mario Kart Wii or Call of Duty Black Ops, as taken multi-player gameplay to another level. We feel this will become an increasing feature in mobile gaming. Here's a list of coop gameplay video games.\n\nWhile the big guns such as Sony, EA Mobile and GameLoft may dominate mobile game publisher revenue, the nature of the tech sector now with its openness and removal of barriers to entry, has allowed independent game studios to flourish. For example, Rovio's Angry Birds was the most downloaded game in Apple's App Store in 2010 -- in June, the game hit 1 million downloads per day. Not to mention our own friends Open Emotion Studios are making forays into mobile gaming with their own unique titles for the PSP.\n\n[Via Mashable]