Mobile gaming cements its dominance, takes majority of worldwide sales!

Just over two years ago, we looked back at analyst reports for the 2015 gaming market and highlighted the surprising finding that the PC was actually the world's most important gaming platform from a raw revenue perspective. But we warned that continued double-digit growth in the mobile market meant the PC's market dominance wouldn't last forever.

Fast-forward to the forecast for the 2018 global game market, and things could scarcely look more different. Newzoo's 2018 Global Games Market Forecast now predicts that mobile games will make up a slim majority (51 percent) of all worldwide gaming revenue this year (including smartphones and tablets, but not dedicated gaming handhelds). That's up from 34 percent in 2015 and just 18 percent in 2012. Console and PC games will split the remainder of the pie relatively evenly in 2018, at 25 percent and 24 percent of worldwide spending, respectively.

Source.

Close the forum, mobile won. Well, I guess Android vs iOS is still interesting.

@loco145: you can add to that that most played PC games are FTP, and mobile counterparts.

And? What exactly is the issue there? Some of those games have a higher skillcap than anything on consoles.

Isn't Fortnite F2P!?

I want to see someone edit the Wikipedia page to include iPhone sales and claim it is the highest selling game platform of all time.

You fanboys want to go down the slippery slope, so let’s go all the way.

Worms control the gaming world

@zaryia: not issue at all, just wanted to state the fact that PC developers don't sell a lot of games and end up moving to consoles where the biggest profit are.

CD PROJEKT red, blizzard and Indies are here to tell this to you.

I mean, every single game sells more on consoles than on PC.

PC only seems to sell more because it has more games, but for every single developer, the console market is more lucrative.

That's all I wanted to say.

Anyway, "skill". I can only give a scornfull laugh after that.

This isnt surprising more people own smart phones than consoles.

The biggest profits are on the PC compared to any console, which is why it has the most games and the most developers....This is a fact, and even shown by the OP.

You're splitting hairs over their payment models.

Huh? Blizzard has PC exclusives which sell extremely well or have extremely high revenue for their f2p .......All of the games by CDPR are on PC and best on PC.....they didn't move to consoles.

This is objectively false. Are you trolling?

Your sad attempt to conflate them with phone games (Post #2) is a joke, considering a lot of the popular/most played ones are nothing like phone games and have a higher skill ceiling than most console titles. All they have in common is the payment model.

You're the only one getting scornful laughs.

That's... pretty sad, to be honest.

Sad. Luckily I'm not contributing as I really don't pay for mobile games. I think in the last 10 years I've spent like $5 on phone games.

What's a smartphone?

@loco145: I prefer regional break down statistics since the Chinese market is protected by the Chinese government.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/how-private-is-private-in-china-/news-story/d1496a69b87fdc6a7682cf91c0ae906a

One other point is that Chinese private companies are very sensitive to popular nationalistic sentiment on issues – often stirred up by the authorities – and in some cases may also genuinely share the same views as Beijing. It was revealing, for example, how many of China’s leading ‘private’ technology companies, Baidu and Tencent, late last year took a very public stance in favour of China’s ownership of the contested Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Clearly leading Chinese private hi-tech companies are not averse to taking actions in support of the stance of Beijing that go beyond pure commercial decision-making.

Is it mobile gaming if you play PS4 in a house that has wheels on it?

@loco145: i wish phones would get more "real" games

like when they got kotor or final fantasy

i think phones are powerful enough to get games like skyrim or some older games

i'd rather play games on my phone on the go than a switch

Mobile and games.

True successor to PC gaming.. eventually.

Casual powaaa drivin' the industry...It's so good!!!

Only drawback the business model :p...But hey thou canst not have it all ^^

I've been predicting this would happen for a long time now. After mobile gaming started dominating Japan well over a decade ago, that was a big sign that the rest of the world will eventually follow suit. The future of gaming is F2P mobile.

And the former console exclusive developers have moved to PC, SE, Konami, Koe Tecmo etc are here to tell this to you. And it's objectively false that every single game sells more on consoles. Diablo 3, Witcher series, PUBG and recently KCD comes to mind.

I'm pretty sure Overwatch sold more on PC too, that game sold over 5 million in China alone. Same for PayDay 2 that game easily sold over 20 million copies on PC. The only thing console really beat PC in sales wise is at most AAA games and even then PC sales aren't that far behind with a few exceptions such as COD and GTA. If anything PC game sales will start to overcome consoles in nearly all AAA games Ubisoft is expecting big growth from PC gaming due to growing premium market in China. They're already working with Tencent to get their games officially published in China. China is a large part in why so many Japanese games are coming to PC now. China ranks second and even first in owning the most copies of games such as Nier Automata, Bayonetta, Blazblue and Dark Souls 3 on Steam.

China is the only country that can rival the USA in most game sales on Steam currently and will eventually surpass the USA once more Chinese users join Steam and the average of games per owner goes up. This isn't even counting in Tencent's Steam competitor WeGame which already has 200M+ users. The sales for some of these indie games on PC could be much higher than what Steamspy would tell us. Don't Starve for example sold 1 million copies in a month on WeGame. Tencent are already trying to buy up China exclusivity for some games on their store like Rocket League. Most people thought PUBG was on the decline when in reality a good amount of the Chinese playerbase were moving on to Tencent's version on WeGame which already has over 10 million players.

I doubt that most indie games outside of a few on the Nintendo Switch sell more on consoles than PC. First of all you hardly see any indie devs make an exclusive for consoles unless Sony or Microsoft fund it let alone see an indie game get a console only launch first. Several indie devs have stated that PC gamers in general are more open to trying out new experiences than console gamers. Just look at Housemarque they've made nearly nothing but Playstation exclusives for the past decade but due too poor sales their next game is going to be a PC title since they've noticed the market for people trying new experiences is much bigger on PC than consoles. Most indie devs would rather release on PC first that consoles first since its too much a financial risk with consoles to release on them first.

@NoodleFighter:

True! I just listed the games from the top of my head. If anyone actively search they can definitely find much much more. Console sales are up front while PC games continue to sell. Hence the reason original Crysis sold 3.5-4M on PC but Crytek went nuts because they couldn't sell that many in the first week.

@pc_rocks: The Witcher 3 is another example, PC only ranked second in selling the most copies the first year but right after that PC took first place in sales and the sales on consoles decreased. It's third year sales were even stronger than its second year sales.

I think Crytek were expecting Halo/COD numbers from Crytek based on how upset they were with the launch sales. Cevat Yerli honestly thought Crysis was on the same level as Halo. Yeah Crysis was a good game but its lore and story was nowhere near Halo's to make it sell as much. Hence why they tried to pander to consoles because they thought it get Halo numbers there but it in fact did worse the previous Crysis games.

Well duh. As much as a few hardcore nerds on the Internet shame mobile games and only want "real" games, the general population disagrees with them.

LOL. They are so detached from the world that you have to feel bad for them. They're still trying to argue that power makes a difference in the sales of consoles even though the SNES, PS1, Game Boy, PS2, Wii, DS, and 3DS prove them wrong. The only generation that proved them right was this one with the PS4. That's 1 out of 5 generations of them being right! lol.

This generation once again proved them wrong, as having the X1X (most powerful console available) is hardly helping boost total Xbox sales (don't know the numbers, but I guess it's safe to say the Pro sells more than the X, even though it's fairly underpowered compared to it)

The most powerful console this gen is the One X. In other words, there has never been a generation where the most powerful console won...

• Gen 1 - N/A
• Gen 2 - 2600 > ColecoVision & 5200
• Gen 3 - NES > Master System
• Gen 4 - SNES & Mega Drive > Neo Geo
• Gen 5 - PS1 > N64
• Gen 6 - PS2 > Xbox & GameCube
• Gen 7 - Wii > PS3 & 360
• Gen 8 - PS4 > One X

I didn't even consider the Xbox One X since it's a mid-gen upgrade, but it also proves my point. Then you have to factor in the fact that only 5% of PCs are more powerful than the PS4. Makes sense because with power comes a big price tag, and only a minority of hardcore gamers are willing to pay the price for it. Most people, including core gamers, just want a decent console that'll play great games.

Was the master system more powerful than the NES? I'll do a little research, as I never knew that

The SMS was more powerful than the NES in virtually every way. The SMS had a faster CPU, faster GPU (with a 16-bit data bus), higher bandwidth, more colours, more detailed graphics, more advanced scrolling, etc.

The SMS was to the NES what the One X is to the PS4. The Master System was essentially a mid-gen upgrade of the Sega SG-1000, which was weaker than the NES, so Sega responded with the more powerful Master System.

Eww...

@Jag85: and ended up flopping just like the x.

Quite the drastic change.

GPU/MEMORY prices are going to hurt the growth of PC gaming for awhile.... rather worrying at this point. But we are still in the positive for now.

Haha "Recloud Calvin" has to take the Free2play jab, laugh at skill and state that ALL games sell better on consoles ... no shock there, muppet.

@recloud: The SMS flopped in Japan and North America, yet went on to become a major success in Europe, South America, and Oceania, beating the NES in those regions.

I wonder if you separate mobile slot machines with some game elements from traditional video games, whether that amount of money made on the games would actually be super low.

The actual mobile game market could be smaller than the PC market for example and I wouldn't be surprised if it was hardly growing faster than PC at the moment.

@KungfuKitten: Don't forget ads, they generate revenue for a game just about every time a person gets game over or the main menu. The traditional/premium game market on mobile is pretty small. Not many people are willing to pay more than $3 to play a mobile game upfront. The limitations in hardware and controls don't really allow you to do much either. While there are a couple of gems in the mobile gaming market they're far few and in between and hard to find. Not to mention if it gets popular enough someone will try to make a F2P knockoff to steal its spotlight.

I know this might make me sound old... but I just can't get into mobile games. Think they are pretty awful for the most part.

Was thinking of using the platform as a test development though. Mostly Android for me since I am most familiar with their SDK and I only got an Android haha. Maybe when I get moving on it I'll start liking it a little more.

Admittedly haven't played some of the so called good ones but most of the ones that look even somewhat good are paid.

Yes. I am contribute.

*Goes to play marvel contest of champions

Wow. Good argument to just make all games multiplatform. They you get half the pie instead of only a quarter.

Meh, Dead Ahead is a good time killer.

@NoodleFighter:

And microtransactions. That's where F2P makes most of its money. Along with ads. F2P model is more profitable than premium model.

And as I was told, "Sales always matter in SW" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

@cainetao11: Revenue is what matters most. Yet SW only focuses on sales.

@Jag85: profits matter more than revenue.

RIP browser based games

@recloud:

Fair enough. In order of importance:

Profit > Revenue > Sales

The point is that SW focuses mostly on just sales, rather than how much revenue is grossed or how much profit is made.

Gaming industry is simply growing in all fronts.

I remember a few years ago people saying that 8th gen would be 100% about motion controls and mobile gaming....and how wrong they were! PS4 alone is selling as much as 360 and PS3 combined. X1, which everyone calls a failure, is selling almost as much as PS3 or 360, and we all know how good is Switch doing.

This industry is in great shape :)

ROFLMAO!!!! Blizzard is not moving over to consoles because they don't make money on PC. WTF do you people come up with this stupid shit. They moved some of their IPs to console to as another revenue stream, but the majority of their sales on their games is PC. Good lord the false narratives you people come up with.