Migration of Digital Services to Mobile: in Gaming, mobile becomes largest sector this year

The migration in digital proceeds relentlessly only in one direction: towards mobile. In everything from music to TV to newsmedia to books to yes, of course.. gaming. Newzoo has just published a new study of the global videogaming industry (worth $109 Billion dollars this year 2017, up 8% from last year). Here is Games Industry Biz article with the study and stats. What do we think of this world of Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Angry Birds and of course now we must add.. Pokemon Go?

There are five major sectors of gaming revenues by gaming platforms: PC, internet, tablet, mobile and console gaming. This is a good methodology in that it separates out tablets from 'mobile' so we don't need to speculate on the relative scales of those, as many other analysts in various digital service groups still combine tablets into the slice of mobile. Last year 2016 is the last time that console gaming revenues still exceeded those of mobile gaming. This year mobile takes that lead. Mobile will account for 32% of total videogaming revenues this year vs 31% of console gaming. PC games account for 23%, tablets 10% and online internet gaming 4% of total videogaming global revenues. So on our thesis of 'mobile will win' here is another milestone. A giant media industry - far bigger than cinema or music, and on par with global radio broadcasting industry revenues, gaming now finds that mobile is its largest slice. This year, 2017. 18 years from the birth of mobile gaming as an industry (launched first on NTT DoCoMo's iMode service on mobile phones, paid mobile gaming started in 1999 in Japan).

Where is gaming headed? PC gaming, online gaming and console gaming slices are flat vs last year in terms of revenues. Tablet gaming shows modest gains. But mobile? Grew by a massive 19% in just one year. Mobile slice of gaming is growing at more than twice the rate of the gaming industry overall. What does Newzoo then expect of the near future with these trends? By 2020 Newzoo expects 40% of total videogaming revenues to come from mobile and be worth $65 Billion dollars all by itself. Yeah... mobile mobile mobile. If we study the pioneering mobile service industries like gaming or music or messaging, we can also draw lessons that will apply to later industries that get into mobile like payments or retail or travel. 

Comments

[ch]

Under what falls the "gameboy's"?

[Tester]

@Wayne Brady:

"Considering how much cheaper mobile games are - this is astonishing."

Not really, it's easier to make 100 people spend one Dollar each than make two people buy a game for $50.

"Part of me wonders - does it matter? Who is going to benefit from this that wasn't already benefitting from games? Is it such a big deal that a game developer supports PC's, consoles and now mobile? Are telco's benefitting? I suppose they sell more data?"

My thoughts exactly. In the end, good for the handful of companies that can prosper in gaming but for smaller outfits it's a toxic pond on PCs, consoles and mobile each.

Also, having worked on mobile games I have had first hand experience with the toxic ingredients which the user will never see but which will spy on them nonetheless. I'd never voluntarily install a mobile game on my phone, considering what kind of broad access they require and what they can do with that.