The comment about killing a market came from you; phones are, as I said, the most popular device for gaming. Likening video gaming to tabletop gaming is silly and irrelevant; phones can and do play the same games which consoles do, board games are not the same market or sphere.
Billions use their phones for games, the Switch accounts for over a hundred million consoles, which are essentially large phones/tablets with controllers. It depends what you mean about dedicated hardware, as there are phones which are more powerful. If it’s based on the controllers, sure, although there are also pads which can connect to mobile devices to make them into little consoles in themselves.
I’m not sure what you mean by smartphone gaming saturation; in terms of how many phones have been sold and who has them? I guess. But the market for mobile games is absolutely huge because of how many exist, so you have a potential market of billions rather than millions.
What I’m saying this is not “this or this” dilemma so the whole premise that one unrelated market is going to snuff out another is a fallacy.
Mobile space is a completly different to any kind of PC or console gaming. It’s not about buttons, it’s the whole thing. You can’t get into hardware because profit margins are laughable. You can’t compete with Google or Apple on market commission because they have a monopoly. You can’t do AAA games because positioning and advertising is a tossup. You’re left with trying to get another gacha game which is akin to trying to do another live service game on traditional platforms and we all know how predictable this business is.
I’ve used portable consoles as an example because years ago argument that they’d be replaced by smartphones had some merit. We now know that was kinda dumb. To replace Xboxes and Playstation you’d have to have tech that’s just not there yet and won’t be there for the foreseeable future (vast majority of people play FIFA, CoD, Fortnite etc so lag just kills it). People who could put up with deficiencies of streaming are likely not the same ones that game on existing hardware. There will be people who will jump on it if it grows but for different types of experiences, creating new market segment.
Mobile space is a completly different to any kind of PC or console gaming
I agree that it’s not a drop-in replacement, but there are definitely games that come out on both mobile and PC/console. There’s definitely some level of overlap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloons_TD_6
Platform(s)
- Android
- iOS
- macOS
- Microsoft Windows
- visionOS
- Xbox One
- Xbox Series X/S
I don’t know what the percentage in terms of game revenue is there. But there is definitely some overlap there.
Yeah, casual games definitely benefit from being on mobile. That group of players barely needed PCs in the first place and was likely first to switch to smartphones and tablets where touch control scheme makes much more sense. Publishers benefit from more streamlined in-app purchases there too so even if the sales volume was similar, overall revenue will definitely favor mobile platforms.
Well no, as there are plenty of MOBA and similar games on mobile that work just fine; lag is really not an issue.
I have showed you Death Stranding and showed the capability of phones. Your waffling on (and continued downvotes), and saying that Apple and Google have a monopoly (uhh what?) when they are direct competitors is hilarious. They are walled gardens in a way, but less so than consoles. Android allows any store or software to be installed.
Portable consoles have been replaced by smartphones, the DS and PS handhelds are dead. Stick to a point or concede.