- A new tell of has shown that mobile gaming has grown to become a huge industry.
- $41.5 billion was spent in gaming apps within a only year.
- This massive revenue surge isn’t necessarily a good thing for the games industry.
It has been a long interval since mobile gaming was considered the boogeyman of the gaming industry. Since mobile gaming started growing in trendiness back in 2008, it has become a huge part of the industry landscape. It’s also the place that micro-transactions really started to happen to popular.
A recent report from industry analysis company Liftoff showed that mobile gamers accept spent more than $41 billion on micro-transactions and other in-app purchases in a single year. This notes that micro-transactions are the biggest income source for mobile developers by a huge margin. All of this is potentially awful advice for the mainstream games industry.
Mobile Gaming Is the Main Cause of Micro-Transactions
Micro-transactions technically started out in the early 2000s on MMOs fellow Habbo Hotel. Back then it was basically just paying for virtual currency to spend on items in-game. But it was transportable gaming that really made them popular. Before mobile games, you’d never expect to see them in a full-priced retail profession.
These days tons of games have micro-transactions, even if they don’t make sense for the game they’re in. Amusements like Star Wars Battlefront II and Middle-earth: Shadow of War were famously littered with micro-transactions. So much so that they both had to take away them due to bad press.
The reason we see so many micro-transactions in games these days is exactly because they make so much coins. This new report is just going to add fuel to the fire. As soon as companies catch wind of it they’re going to be overlapping down on micro-transactions in big-budget titles. All thanks to mobile gaming.
There’s Only One Way to Fix It
There is a way that we can stop these call attention ti appearing in full-budget titles. Stop paying for them. You don’t even have to stop buying the games themselves to be sure, although that might help. If we, as gamers, stop patronizing micro-transaction en masse, they’d disappear pretty straight away.
Of course, that’s not going to happen. Even if large sections of the audience for games stopped buying them, there purposefulness always be people who don’t. People who aren’t necessarily involved in gaming culture probably don’t care about micro-transactions. They equitable want their Wumpa coin.
If this trend continues micro-transactions are only going to become more and numberless popular. Not only that, but we’ve seen games companies bleeding into the mobile gaming market. How long resolve it really be before we can’t tell the difference between the two anymore?
Last modified: December 12, 2019 21:10 UTC