Mobile gaming is bigger than I thought, while consoles and PC are in continuous decline

[stroopwafel]

Mobile has a practically unlimited market, low level entry, high returns at marginal costs and continued return on investment. Meanwhile console have 5+ years of development at astronomical costs, very high risk and a one-time purchase profit model and second hand market the publisher receives no revenue from or dubious microtransactions with lots of bad press. These high profile 'prestige' games aren't really sustainable for most companies. The trend towards mobile have already been going on for the last 10 years though. Asia in particular is pretty much all mobile. But as long as consoles remain very popular in the western hemisphere then games will keep being made for it.

 

[Dreiko]

I'm all for porting RPGs to mobile, but you wouldn't design a game for mobile from the ground up to be played 8 hours at a time.

This actually kind of goes both ways, as there's a number of mobile games I wouldn't mind playing on console or PC - Fire Emblem Heroes, Diablo Immortal, etc. But nope, these are mobile-exclusive because...reasons. And I really don't get why.

You could easily make a jrpg for phones and have it be a normal videogame but control through the phone. You don't need to rely on ports. It's why I like fate grand order, it plays like a normal videogame and doesn't rely on multiplayer or competition gimmicks (apparently Nasu was inspired by the souls series' take on multiplayer of all things).


And yeah those games could work on pc or other systems too, but my point here is that whatever original stuff is on phones has no reason to not be full fledged games and be crappy phone games. If the original gameboy can handle pokemon red, you can make do with what the phones of today can handle.

 

[Gergar12]

99% of mobile gaming is microtransaction rip-offs, good luck finding the one percent that isn't derivative of mainstream games.

I mean I used to play battle nations, and the only reason I got good at the game was that I got free microtransactions from an app that gave you premium currency in exchange for using/downloading apps, and whatnot. Good luck finding a game like that.

 

[sXeth]

Mobile has a practically unlimited market, low level entry,

As someoen who works in tech support and has to deal with phones. Also this.


So many people have a ubiqitous $0 dollar smartphone. You will not get a 0 dollar console (nevermind a PC) for anything near that. (It also makes most of the phone holders entitled brats with no idea how much the thing they're holding is actually worth, as being tech support goes)