A Revolution Is Coming to Mobile Gaming: Here’s Why

No sector of the gaming industry has seen more growth in recent years than mobile gaming. In fact, it is now the dominant sector in the industry overall, taking in more money than console and PC gaming. Estimates of its total value vary, but smartphone gaming is said to generate somewhere around $125 billion dollars – almost twice as much as console revenue. It’s becoming the dominant theme in the gaming sector, with publishers recognizing the flexibility and affordability that mobile gaming offers.

Some game developers were slow to realize that the future of gaming would lie with smartphones. In fact, we would argue that the iGaming sector was much more prescient in seeing this fact. Online casino game developers began to optimize titles for mobile back in the late 2000s. Slots players, for instance, take it as a given that they can play top slot titles like Busters Bones on mobile, desktop, or tablet as they choose. Today, big game developers like Activision Blizzard and Konami are catching up by releasing console-quality titles for your mobile.

Yet, there are other changes coming to mobile gaming. Two important changes, in fact, that might cause a revolution in mobile gaming. A revolution might not always suggest improvements, but we are going to argue that this will make mobile gaming cheaper, more interesting, and more accessible. Here’s why:

The end of the Apple and Google Monopoly

Consider this: developing a mobile game is actually quite easy. Even before advances in AI (see our next section below), it was quite simple to code a game and launch it on the market. The problem, however, is that you mostly had to rely on Google and Apple to list it on their app stores. Apple, in particular, is notoriously fussy about listing games that don’t meet its specifications. Apple alone is said to reject about 400,000 gaming apps per year, so we’ll never know what great games we have missed out on. In addition, the two Big Tech companies can charge significant fees for game developers.

Now, things are changing. The European Union has ruled that Apple and Google must dismantle the monopoly, allowing new app stores to launch, some of which will be gaming-focused. It will take time for these app stores to establish themselves, but arguably, it’s going to increase the number of games that can be launched and make it easier for developers to make a profit due to changes in fees. While the EU has been the leader in this respect, you only have to look at the lawsuits from the Department of Justice against both Apple and Google; it feels inevitable that the US will follow. Overall, it could provide a much more fertile landscape for both gamers and game developers.

The rise of AI in mobile games

As we said, creating a mobile game is not that difficult. However, AI technology will soon make it possible for anyone – and we mean anyone – to build a game without computer coding experience. Building games with text prompts – in a similar manner to how you would chat with ChatGPT – is likely to be the future of games development, meaning anyone will be able to create their own gaming worlds. The mobile market is clearly the most amenable to these homemade games, so expect a slew of new titles to come once the tools to create them become formalized.

In addition, AI will make mobile games ever more complex, allowing developers to create ever-expanding gaming worlds that are personalized for each player. As AI continues to evolve, mobile games will not only become more immersive but also more accessible, allowing a broader audience to engage in game creation and play. This will be industry-wide, of course, and we already see evidence of AI expanding both the development and in-game mechanics of premium games for console. Yet, mobile gaming is much better suited to experimentation. There will be hits and misses with AI technology, but we’d argue that smartphone gaming is where you will see the best examples of AI innovation.