When you think back to those first sweet moments when you first discovered gaming, the chances are it wasn’t on a mobile phone.
For players of a certain generation, that eureka moment may have happened on the original GameBoy, maybe on Pokemon.
The sounds, the lights, the progression; it gets you hooked. As the years passed and the technology improved, PlayStation and Xbox started to lead from the front.
FIFA, Grand Theft Auto, Halo. All these games are complete classics, but now we’re starting to see a transition from the big screen to the little.
According to a 2018 study ‘interacting with mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) has now become strongly embedded in contemporary societies across the world’, which means that more eyeballs than ever before are on the little screen.
As a result of this, it’s only natural that companies have gravitated towards developing mobile games. More people looking at their phones means there’s a greater chance of earning money through their developments, which furthers the chance of better games being made.
Phones have become increasingly sophisticated and able to run more complex games. We’ve even started to see the development of gaming-focused smartphones such as the Black Shark range.
Not only content with traditional games, phones are also brilliant for playing online slots. Many virtual casinos have purpose-built mobile websites, which are formatted for smaller screens.
Higher screen resolutions, quicker operating systems and larger screens make this experience as pleasant as possible. This, combined with the introduction of 5G to our airwaves, mean that online casinos run smoother and faster than ever before.
Now we get to the crux of the matter; why? Why have we seen such a rise in smartphone gaming? One way to explain this is pretty simple – money.
Research has indicated that this market is expected to double in revenue through 2021 and this is part of the reason why some companies are pivoting towards this area.
You can now play free games, vastly evolved from the initial rush of Candy Crush and Angry Birds, that feature high-end graphics and complex storylines. The little screen is becoming more like the big screen, and the two are moving towards each other at an increasingly evolved rate.
What will we see next year? Big franchises like Call of Duty are already on mobile, but we may see a pivot from Apple and the other big players towards faster systems and better screen resolutions in order to meet those demands.
