14 DAY TRIAL // PopCap Games, the company which dominates the casual video games market, has released a study that shows how the present of gaming is being dominated by those who play on mobile devices, with subjects in both the United States and in the United Kingdom saying that mobile play time is now more important than that spent on the PC or on home consoles like the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360.
The study was conducted by the Information Solutions Group and show that more than half of respondents said that they played a game on a mobile home in the past that they could remember, with 33.6 percent of all adults saying that they played a mobile game in the past month and 24.6% doing so in the past week.
Among those who owned more powerful smartphones, 83 percent of users said they played a game in the last week, meaning they were classified as being “avid mobile phone gamers.”
Dennis Ryan, who is the executive vice president of Worldwide Publishing at PopCap, has stated when the numbers were published that, “Mobile games are, along with social games, the hottest sector of the video game industry by far. As more people purchase smartphones and the entire process of finding, purchasing and playing mobile games becomes as simple as browsing the internet, the mobile games market is going to accelerate even more.”
The results are important for the video game industries and even for those who just play on home console or on the PC and are not interested in ever getting a handheld or a smartphone to game on.
The PopCap Games study means that developers and publishers will likely look at the mobile phone market as more important in the near future, which could lead to video games that have less complexity and simplified console schemes on other platforms.
The good news is that a mobile focus could also lead to cheaper games on other consoles.