With the latest releases of the new generation consoles, this past holiday season with the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5, with the PlayStation even looking to break sales records held for two decades by the PlayStation 2, but have run into the heel that is the global semiconductor shortage hurting sales as supply issues are expected to go on throughout the rest of 2021 and even well into 2022 too. Despite this, globally gaming has been thriving and it’s largely in part to the devices already in our own pockets – our mobile phones. But what is it about our devices that has continued to push the gaming market forward?
Bigger audiences, wider demographics – For a long time gaming had always been primarily aimed at a younger teen male as the primary audience, as they were also the primary consumers of gaming, but recent years have seen a huge shift as that previous assessment is no longer true – in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Mobile gaming is increasingly made up of players over the age of 34 as recent studies suggest as much as half of all players fit into that age bracket, and the same is true for gender as over half of all mobile gamers are women too – providing a host of new opportunities for the gaming options that can be delivered.
Studios dedicated to just mobile – Whilst it’s not uncommon to see studios devote their full efforts to releasing titles on just one platform, as has been true throughout the history of consoles both with what we have now and with the older handheld devices, but studios have been able to change with mobile as games can be made with as little as one person, and with microtransactions and premium features it allows for a quicker turnover of newer titles and development in spaces that other platforms may be unable to do.
Growing acceptance of gaming and different genres – With the growing audience and changing demographics, acceptance toward gaming has been changing as a whole and it’s no longer a smaller niche activity, it has also allowed for the growth and changing attitudes toward different genres too as the older audience will have different preferences and allows for legislation and regulation to change too in order to deliver these games which may have had previous restrictions in place – the biggest changes seen in this space recently have largely been focussed in online gambling and betting, targeted promo codes like hard rock casino bonus code have been key for this changing audience, and the growing acceptance to issue casino licensing online has helped here too.
Hardware within our devices is changing quickly enough to enable the games we play to look and feel better than ever too, and whilst still limited mobile is catching up, and with the promised future in things like virtual and augmented reality too, mobile will certainly look to remain key in being a success for the overall gaming market as a whole.
