News - Mobile and social to drive gaming growth

[HEXUS]

New figures from Gartner reveal shifts in the global gaming market.

Read more.

[OilSheikh]

"the biggest growth opportunity comes from mobile"

Yup, small buttons and PS1 graphics really make mobile gaming worthwhile!

[Ross1]

if by driving, you mean weighing down the bandwagon with metric tons of horse manure, then yes.

[crossy]

While console gaming is the biggest contributor to gaming revenue - accounting for two thirds - the console games market faces increasing competition from online and social gaming.

Question - isn't "normal" PSN/XBL gaming "online/social" (the latter especially if you're not on 1-v-1 deathmatch)?

Anyway, I'm not convinced that something on iPhone/Android is going to compete with most of the PS3/XB360 content out there. On the other hand, they're surely going to cut (severely?) into the market for PSP/DS and possibly even the Wii? Heck, that dual screen tablet (S2) from Sony even looks like a DS! I ditched my PSP a while ago (before the Sony break-ins), and I'm only holding onto the DSi-XL because of the games I've got and way better battery life (although I think I much prefer playing games with a stylus - fat finger syndrome)

As a very infrequent online player what's worrying me is that the publishers like EA, Activision etc seem to hellbent on moving to a subscription only service. So not only do you have to pay for PSN/XBL you then have to pony up for the publishers tax. Carrying that over to mobile, are we going to see games that only work fully with "Elite" (etc) but still liberally splattered with ads? Seems like a logical way to maximise the revenue, but I suspect it'd put a lot of peoples back's up.