Many industry experts have identified the mobile platform as where the video-game market is heading. Whilst console gaming is still a strong sector within the market, it is presently suffering an erosion of profits due to the skyrocketing production costs of developing these high-tech titles.
Games designed for the mobile platform, on the other hand, have seen revenue steadily increase. This is mainly due to low production budgets, with often only singular programmers needed, and non-existent manufacturing costs on account of being download-based products.
Another factor in the mobile platform’s rise to the top is its utilisation by online gambling brands. Online casinos, such as 32Red, grosvenorcasinos or 888casino among many others have become immensely popular with their mixture of real-money gambling and streamed-events attracting an increasingly large user-base.
Online casinos are presently unavailable on console platforms, which, along with the anytime accessibility offered by the mobile platform, explains why these home-based systems have not benefited from the emergence of online gambling with those likes of 32Red mentioned above.
Nowhere is more symbolic of the rise in mobile gaming than Japan.
Japan is perhaps the largest video-game market in the world, with a long and lucrative history within the console gaming industry, yet this market has also seen mobile gaming begin to outstrip the other sectors within video-gaming.
A release by the Japanese Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association noted that console-related sales had fallen a staggering 16 per cent in 2013, which has seen sales drop from $4.8 billion to just $4 billion. Similarly, the USA is also seeing a drastic drop in console-related sales.
This is in stark contrast to the progression of mobile gaming within Japan during this same period. The sector brought in more than $5 billion in 2013 despite being worth only $370 million in 2011. It is growth like this which has made certain industry experts predict that Japan’s mobile gaming market will soon eclipse the USA’s, the present world leader.
It is hard to disagree with this prediction when you consider both Japan’s growth within the sector and how expertly mobile-gaming has been managed and promoted within the country.
Japan has a unique business model when it comes to mobile gaming, namely by offsetting a reduced headset cost through predicted consumer investment in App products. For example, Apple’s iPhone’s retail price in Japan is the cheapest in the world due to its apps store having the highest turnover.
This is because the Japanese consumer does not just buy the apps themselves but also heavily invests in paid extra-features. Therefore, the key to this market is not to get the consumer to pay the highest price for the phone itself but to get the customer using your product, at any cost, to get the revenue from their app purchases.
This has been a decision that benefits both mobile game developers and phone manufactures, as the increased user-base and their cash injections will create profits for both industries within Japan.
It is this circular and beneficial model that can be mainly credited for Japan’s rise to the top as a mobile gaming consumer.
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