Mobile Gaming Industry Trends 2018

We can’t seem to get enough of mobile gaming                                               Source: Pixabay

The mobile gaming industry has seen consistent growth over the past decade or so, as more people use their smartphones for entertainment and competition. Although 2016 was an exciting year for mobile gaming breakthroughs, including the release of the legendary Pokémon Go, 2017 continued those trends, paving the way for an excellent year to come. As technology advances and developers continue to give us stunning releases, 2018 has also shaped up to be a special year for gaming.

• Industry Growth in 2018

If there were a single accurate prediction to be made, it is that the mobile gaming industry will continue to grow as it has been doing at quite a pace for some time now. How much it will grow would be difficult to calculate were it not for handy statistics by Newzoo.

According to these statistics, the mobile gaming industry was worth around $108.9 billion in 2017, with mobile gaming representing $46.1 billion or 42 percent of the total revenue. This spending was dominated by smartphone users, with tablet units dropping in sales.

The growth of global gaming and mobile gaming industries, from 2016-2020                                        Source: Newzoo.com

Newzoo predicts a total revenue of $57.9 billion by the end of 2018, as the industry continues to grow and games attract more paying users and a higher average spend per gamer. This represents a growth of around 19 percent year-on-year, with no sign of it slowing.

Asia is the fastest growing market, and now brings in around a quarter of the global gaming revenue, a total of around $27.5 billion. However, North America is still the second largest market and is growing at 4 percent year-on-year.

Popular genres for 2018 include:

• Match 3 – such as Candy Crush. This genre is one of the fastest growing, with 2.4 million users in July 2016 and 30 million in July 2017.

• Word and Quiz – such as Words with Friends, which gained massive popularity in 2017. Still, where puzzle games are concerned it is Hearthstone that still rules the roost, even in 2018.

• RPG-AR – Pokémon Go paved the way for this genre, but there has been little else worthy since then, so user base has declined as the popularity of Pokémon Go fell away. There has been a resurgence of RPG-AR games in 2018, as developers begin to release higher quality games, including the highly anticipated ‘Harry Potter – Wizards Unite’ game made by Niantic, the same developers as ‘GO’.

• Online casinos and poker – online and mobile casino gaming is rising and will continue throughout 2018. This includes social casino gaming, which is now enjoyed by around 37 percent of PC and mobile gamers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Increasingly, online casinos and poker sites are releasing mobile apps of their software, as well as providing information about the games available on their site, and how to play them.  Online casinos are also becoming increasingly more innovative in their attempts to attract gamers, now offering live casino games with real dealers.
• Battle Royal shooters – Nobody really predicted how big of a success Fortnite would turn out to be. Released on iOS in April 2018, the sandbox cooperate survival game is a kind of cross between Minecraft and Battlefield, with lots of collecting, building and shooting in teams on huge scale maps. It is soon to be released on Android too. Fortnite’s biggest rival is PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG), available on all consoles and with a full mobile version released in early 2018.

Mobile gaming genre popularity trends through 2017               Source: Vertoanalytics

• Augmented Reality

In 2017, game developers moved away from virtual reality (VR) and toward augmented reality (AR). The reason: there was no substantial market for VR games, despite the release of mobile-compatible headsets like Google’s Daydream and the Samsung Gear VR.

On the other hand, the release of Apple ARKit on iOS 11 made AR accessible to over 100 million smartphone and device users overnight. Hundreds of AR apps and games began to appear in the App Store, though few provided anything more than gimmicks. This trend is expected to repeat in 2018 with the advent of the Android ARCore, and you can expect hundreds of AR games to find their way into the Google Play Store.

This accessibility of AR has significant potential to drive the market further toward AR, following in the footsteps of Pokémon Go, which consistently ranked as one of the top five mobile games throughout 2017. The creators, Niantic Labs, are already working on the new Harry Potter: Wizards Unite game, which will allow players to explore the real world while fighting monsters and casting spells! Also in the making are Jurassic World Alive, Walking Dead: Our World and Ghostbusters, all with AR elements and all set for release in 2018.

Meanwhile, VR technology is continuing to advance in 2018, and has become considerably more accessible, but is mostly considered a cool toy for PC gaming. The Oculus Rift is now available for less than half the price it stood at when released, and with games like Robo Recall pushing the boundaries of VR capabilities, we are well on our way to an immersive VR gaming experience. Online casinos are already using the technology to immerse players in casino environments from the comfort of their home. Still, 2018 is not looking like a big year for VR mobile gaming. AR will be king, at least for now.

• Monetization Methods

Monetization has always been an issue for game developers and promoters. Do you charge a one-off fee for the game, offer in-app purchases or find other subtler methods to extract payment for games? This is the question that developers face, and the monetization methods used tend to change and develop over time.

In 2017, we saw an increase in the number of free-to-play (F2P) games, with booster packs or extras that cost money. Increasingly, developers began to use the “gacha” method, in which players spin a wheel to unlock a prize. These gacha extras cost the player in-game currency, and in-game currency usually costs real money to buy. Players may have to spin the wheel quite a few times to unlock rare characters or items, so gacha methods have come under scrutiny for being like gambling. Still, games like Star Wars Battlefront II have had massive success with their “loot boxes,” and this system continues to gain momentum.

Micro-transactions are still one of the main ways to extract money from gamers in 2018, with games like Fortnite and The Sims relying on a constant barrage of them to make profit. Players are wise to this now, but it doesn’t stop the temptation of buying a few in game ‘bucks’ to get ahead of the competition.

Other games have stuck to the fixed price payment system, one example being Super Mario Run, which retailed at $9.99 The game was popular, but Nintendo still deemed it a financial failure, and many players were put off by the high price tag. PUBG also retailed at a fixed price, but is expected to to start dolling out the in-app purchases with future updates. Still, advertising is another way to monetize, and the revenue from this method could increase in 2018 with the availability of sophisticated analytics.