The Year of Android Gaming

Google Play has led the markets in South Korea and Japan. These countries are currently two of the three fastest-growing markets worldwide. Gaming in Asian countries are expected to continue growing. It is expected that growth will reach up to a 759 percent year-over-year increase in revenue, in South Korea. Freemium Android gaming market is also expanding rapidly. The market insists that Freemium is the future of mobile. Games and social application trends are also evolving.

Google / Android And Me

Ouya’s microconsole has reached over 500 games through its Discover storefront. The downloaded games met a milestone after it was announced by Ouya founder Julie Uhrman on the company blog that more than 25,000 developers were registered. 2013 was a fantastic year for gaming hardware. Game industry console revenues are expected to rise throughout this year. Ouya also is set to release a new hardware revision for next year.

According to Flurry, Moms, like most other groups, spend a lot of smartphone and tablet time playing games. In fact, on Android, more than half of the time American Moms spent in apps was spent playing games. The report also states, Android smartphones and tablets – are the fastest adopted technology in history; adopted faster than electricity, televisions, microwaves, personal computers, cell phones, the Internet, dishwashers, stoves, and a whole lot more.

Last month, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook – the number two most visited website on the web – declared “we are now a mobile company” explaining that “you just could do so much better by doing native [application] work” versus using languages like HTML5 on top of browsers. Approximately 600 million of Facebook’s 1 billion monthly active users already accesses Facebook via mobile.

The beauty of gaming in the cloud means games can be played from anywhere. NVIDIA recently released GRID BETA app available free for Android 4.1 and up at the Google Play Store. Android users can find that there are a variety of Android devices compatible with streaming games. NVIDIA SHIELD was displayed earlier this year at CE3. The future is through GRID streaming to a variety of devices including SHIELD and Android Tablets. The foundation of these cloud gaming servers are the GRID K520 and K340 boards. It is the first dedicated cloud gaming platform.

The future of Android Gaming remains growing and popular. Android fragmentation is still present. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated "Android is the most disruptive operating system that we've seen in a few decades, in a couple of decades," Android is not just about phones," “We believe that Android is going to be a very important platform for gaming in the future, and to do so we have to create devices that enable great gaming to happen on Android." "Android is probably the most versatile operating system that we've ever known." The market expects the worldwide gaming platform for Android to expand in particular areas within Asia.

IDC reports, “The number of paying smartphone and tablet gamers will surpass the number of paying GOH gamers worldwide in 2013 and rise at a rapid rate through 2017. The number of GOH bundles shipped, meanwhile, should fall at an average of nearly 7% per year over the next five years. “ According to IDC, “Total mobile/portable gaming revenue, including digital and packaged game software, GOH hardware bundles, and direct advertising revenue going to platform suppliers and game developers/publishers, is forecast to approach $23 billion in 2017.”