Saturday 20 April 2013

Mobile gaming isn't the future

Mobile gaming isn't the future

There's a trend at the minute that people seem to think Mobile gaming on platforms like Android and iOS are the future for video gaming. Most critics and indeed, many people within the industry seem to believe that gaming on the P.C and  games consoles is going to or is on the decline due to mobile taking dominance. Many people think console and P.C gaming is already on the decline and past its prime.

I think people are over estimating gaming on mobile platforms. It is true that more people own smart phones now that are capable of playing casual titles than the number of people who own games consoles. The thing is games on smart phones are usually quite casual. Take for example Angry Birds... Angry Birds is quite a fun game and I've sunk a few hours into it during the commute to and from work. But there's the thing, I do it when I have a spare moment in the day. I don't really bother with casual Android gaming that much when I'm at home. Mobile gaming isn't going to stomp dedicated gaming machines and P.C's flat and leave them in the dust for the simple reason that mobile gaming is a fairly casual experience.

If I want to play Crysis, Dark Souls, Supreme Commander, ArmA3 or the like It's just not going to happen on a mobile platform. It has to be on a P.C or Console. Playing these sorts of games isn't a casual experience and casual devices usually aren't powerful enough or intuitive enough to use with a reasonable control scheme for those game genres. FPS games control schemes handle extremely poorly on mobile phones, they handle reasonably well on consoles and absolutely brilliantly on a P.C. Therein lies an interesting point, AAA titles, many of which are FPS titles won't make it to mobile platform.

TLDR? Mobile gaming is part of the future of gaming, not the be all and end all.

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