Video games have always existed as a flexible, diverse medium that can produce art in different forms and budgets, and we fall in love with it nonetheless.
So, it’s probably no surprise it found its way into the mobile market decades ago, and sometimes it looked like the obvious expansion after the massive success some mobile titles witnessed. But, is it going to dominate the industry in the near future, and danger gaming as we know it?
Now, before we dive more into that, one thing always needed to be cleared right upfront: you have the right to enjoy any type\genre of video game you like, for whatever reasoning you are happy with, whether it’s to be amazed at the presence and design of a triple-A title or a fun and addicting mobile title.
But the idea of dominating the industry, now that is something else to look into, especially when it comes to mobile titles. You see, the general attributes of these titles are what makes them capable of dangering the other types and genres within the industry. Being cheaper to produce and easier to distribute, are great privileges over the remaining genres, whose production costs continue to rise.
To put this perspective in a different picture, you can always bet on having grand titles like God of War Ragnarök and Forza Horizon in the production pipeline no matter what happens to the industry, even if mobile titles took over the bigger cake, But, smaller titles like Stray (which was one of the best games of this year) might get squeezed in the scramble towards a new bigger venture towards the smartphone\portable market, and eventually vanish in the light of new investment measures that don’t see enough, convincing reasons, not to direct the attention towards the financially logical approach.
This may be an exaggerated simplified expectation of the future of the industry, but the exaggeration part seems to gradually fade away, after the recent statements from Phil Spencer, head of Gaming at Microsoft, who admitted that huge and popular titles like Call of Duty are not more important than mobile titles like Candy Crash.
And he seems to prefer to put the two within the scope of equality when it comes to near-future investments in the gaming industry, and their competitor counterpart, Sony, has already announced before their raising interest in the mobile market.
If the biggest players in the market believe it’s time to put more effort towards mobile titles and even select it as equally important to AAA games, there’s no doubt at least one trait of this industry’s future is clear.
But will the whole industry raise a flag of surrender that towers over the world with the “Mobile is the future” title? well, that will be the interesting, and perhaps worrying, thing to wait and see.
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