Mobile Games Dominate Consoles: Why Is Spending On Google Play Increasing?

The portable gaming report is out and it shows some interesting trends that show the increasing importance of mobile games over traditional dedicated handhelds and console games.

-Google Play and iOS both saw growth in downloads, consumer spending and install base market share, whilst dedicated handheld gaming consumer spending actually declined.

• -iOS overtook the entire handheld gaming market in consumer spending with Google Play likely to surpass it in Q2 2013
• -Gaming-optimized handhelds experienced significant decreases in revenue and packaged game shipments.
• -The global install base for those “gaming-optimized handhelds” was about 200 million in Q1 2013. To put that in perspective, Gartner estimates that more than 2 billion phones and tablets are being/will be shipped this year alone. In other words, it’s through volume that mobile devices have closed and blown past the revenue-per-user gap.
• -Although the total amount consumers spent on mobile games was far greater on iOS than on Android, gaming amounted to about 80 percent of all consumer spending on Android, vs. about 70 percent on iOS.
• -The report splits consumers into four geographic zones: North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. For both Android and gaming-optimized handhelds, the Asia-Pacific share of total spending increased by more than 10 points (see the chart embedded below).

The current generation of mobile gaming is gaming-only devices like Sony’s PSP and Vita and Nitendo’s DS, DSi and 3DS. Consumer spending on the handhelds declined significantly while Google Play and iOS increased significantly at the same time suggesting a correlation. Spending for mobile and tablet games is three times higher than handhelds. It’s also worth taking into account that mobile games tend to be free or cheaper, coming in at the dollar range compared to the upwards of $40-50 a handheld game normally costs.

You can download the chart for yourself HERE, but we’ve posted all the graphs for those who don’t work in media. Google Play should keep track of these interesting trends, consumers are increasingly resorting to their smartphones and tablets as all-purpose devices that include gaming. They don’t want to wait until Black Friday or Christmas to find good deals on dedicated gaming platforms.

As more powerful graphics and sophisticated games come to tablets and smartphones along with games that run on Android, we are very liklely going to see traditional dedicated handhelds and consoles by Sony and Microsoft fall by the way-side.

Interested in Android games?

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