Report: Mobile game spending beats handheld games in Q4 2012
updated 12:26 pm EST, Thu February 21, 2013
Nintendo, Apple claimed to be close in game revenues
New research suggests that gaming on mobile devices is now a more lucrative market for developers than portable game systems. Spending on gaming apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play is said to be higher than for dedicated portable consoles from Sony and Nintendo during the last quarter of 2012, with the largest amounts of spending taking place in December due to hardware being given as gifts.
The report from research firms App Annie and IDC claims that close to 60-percent of spending in the quarter for Nintendo and Sony games took place in December, higher than the equivalent December share for iOS and Android games. It is also claimed that Nintendo and Apple are relatively close in terms of game-related spending, though exact figures showing how close they are is not provided by App Annie
In terms of individual stores, while a third of all apps downloaded are games, the proportion is slightly higher for iOS than for Android. Even so, the share of consumer spending of games is apparently much higher on Android than iOS. It is also claimed that the largest proportion of Android games are bought by customers in the Asia-Pacific region with North America trailing, the two regions are roughly equal for iOS.
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Which translates to:
Which translates to:
...poorer quality games for dedicated consoles. Thanks for setting the time-waster market on fire, Apple.
With crappy publishers like Gameloft who now make digital download games for Nintendo, we can welcome the mediocrity of console titles. Not only that, but in-app-purchases are exploding and every developer is taking a stake in the quick cash-grab gimmick. I don't know about Sony or Microsoft, but Nintendo just released it's first free-to-play title in the eShop in Europe (Tank Tank Tank). Fantastic.
I think mobile gaming (iOS) is instilling a greed for publishers that's only going to continue to piss off their customers more and more.