The success of mobile gaming is not what it seems. Don’t be fooled by the revenue generated by the handful successful IPs on mobile. Just think about the conversion rate – 2 billion mobile phones with 650,000 games versus 70 million handheld game consoles and a 100th of a number of games – the sales numbers aren’t at all impressive. It’s no wonder that for most game developers, the mobile market is little more than a joke.
And that’s a massive issue, because, in order to build a viable gaming market, you need to have the top talent in the industry designing games for the mobile devices. That isn’t to say there aren’t examples of good video games on mobile phones; Plants Versus Zombies, Downwell, Ocean Horn – some of these purpose built experiences work superbly on mobile. But, it’s vital that the market can attract developers who understand the design culture to build these games properly and bring quality experiences to the market.
Perhaps the biggest danger with this whole conundrum is that mobile gaming is now infecting other parts of the gaming industry, too. We’re seeing an unwanted spillover of F2P to the console market, and this race to the bottom that the model encourages is beginning to influence people’s perception of value. So much so that people no longer want to pay $60 for AAA games, even if that’s significantly less expensive than games cost twenty years ago.
So, what is to be done, and can the market ever right itself? Sure, even in the direction it’s currently heading we’re likely to see the same pattern that we’ve seen in the games industry several times over. Given time, enough publishers will lose money, forcing developers to combine. You can then expect the quality to go up, thus allowing the market consolidate itself. But we’re probably talking years for this to take effect.
What we need to happen is for the platform providers to start taking responsibility and take control of the market. Someone needs to step up and admit that the scourge of F2P and the problems with quality control are a bad user experience. We need Apple and the Android manufacturers, Sony and Microsoft, to rid these networks of low-quality experiences. To curate and find the best experiences, to not tolerate or certify poor games.
There’s plenty of time for all of this to occur, but one thing’s for certain, somebody has to take the initiative. If the murmurings that Nintendo’s up and coming mobile title, Super Mario Run, is to be released with fixed price point are true, then that’s already a step in the right direction. It would represent a big move from a major publisher to break free of the F2P model, not including Square Enix’s re-release of the Final Fantasy games.
We desperately need premium, one-time purchase content to make a return to mobile. We need household name IPs to debut on the platform with the game design specifically built for touch screen gaming and demonstrate what mobile’s really capable of. There’s still hope, especially given the markets infancy, but right now it’s still a mess of epic proportions.
