In the GC Developer Conference in Leipzig in Germany, Stephane Labrunie VP, I-play Europe has predicted that mobile gaming is set to beat console gaming by the end of the year! The reason Laburine gave was that mobile gaming unlike console gaming ‘is the definition of a true mass market’.
To support his statement he pointed out the following current facts:
• 48 per cent of mobile gamers are female,
• 58 per cent are aged between 18 and 34.
He said; “This market will sell more games on mobile than traditional consoles in 2006.”
However, he accepted that mobile gaming is yet to gain maturity, and will take time to grow. He quoted some figures that following the current trend forecast sales of some 1.8 billion game-enabled mobile devices by 2008 and 1.7 billion paid download by 2010 raising the gross revenue in mobile gaming industry to $5.9 billion.
He ended his speech in an optimistic tone saying;
The best is yet to come. Mobile gaming will be the fastest growing segment of the total videogames industry.
As the current trend shows, there definitely lies a huge potential for mobile game developers. I agree completely with Laburine when he said that mobile gaming is for the mass market and not for the niche as console gaming. There might be hundreds of millions in console gaming today, but the figures dwarf before the numbers that game-enabled mobile handsets sell.
Read
