Calm down. Mobile isn't going to kill consoles.

Michael Futter writes: No gamer, pundit or casual observer can deny that mobile platforms have become serious contenders in the realm of interactive entertainment. My own children have driven that point home for me, with my three-year-old able to deftly manipulate touchscreen devices as if he were born with one in hand.

This is a stark contrast to my own childhood, when only a single weekly encounter with my assigned Apple IIe in the computer lab, glowing a dim monochrome green, meant I would have the chance to chase down Carmen Sandiego one more time.

[bfenty]

Great article! This is something I've been concerned about for a while.

[Burning_Finger]

Mobile games will just kill itself. lol

[Skywalker123]

the 3ds is the number 1 system in the world. That shows you how little impact mobile has

[LOGICWINS]

????

U being serious with that comment? Mobile phones are the most popular electronic devices in the world...hence also making them the most popular gaming devices in the world by default.

[Skywalker123]

Are you being serious with your comment? Mobile phones are not the most popular electronic devices in the world. The computer beats it easily..........

And even if they did technically sell the most there primary function is not gaming so no way in hell would that make it the most popular gmaing device by default.

[LOGICWINS]

"And even if they did technically sell the most there primary function is not gaming so no way in hell would that make it the most popular gmaing device by default."

You said nothing about gaming in your comment.

"Are you being serious with your comment? Mobile phones are not the most popular electronic devices in the world. The computer beats it easily.........."

Nope, there are more mobile phones in the wild than desktops, laptops, and tablets combined. If you disagree, prove me wrong.

[Skywalker123]

1) When I saw system = game system.

2) Its statistical fact. I dont need you to prove you wrong. I am right

The point is doom and gloom, sensationalism, generalizations are fun on the internet, but real gaming and real life is different

[Fylus]

@Skywalker... wow, just wow... Go ahead and check Android's or Iphone's appstores. The top few games in each of them have been downloaded and played hundreds of millions of times by unique users, and thanks to this, the amount of casual gamers using mobile devices is growing rapidly. At this day and age, mobile gaming is by far the most popular way to game world wide. That is a fact. YOU are wrong.

I'm not saying mobile gaming is the best way to game (it isn't even close); it's just the easiest, most accessible way to game, thus the huge user-base of mobile gaming.

[LOGICWINS]

Hylus, u say that the most popular way to game are dedicated devices? Sir, u and reality don't coincide with each other do they?

Btw, u disproved ur own argument. By the very fact that a lot of these games are free(your words, not mine) is what makes them more popular than the games on dedicated handhelds.

[Vahn89]

LOGIC, uh, who are you talking to? Fylus or Hiten? Cuz you kinda blended both of their names together lol.

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

He meant dedicated game system.

What he was trying to say is that a dedicated PORTABLE gaming system(3DS) is the number one selling dedicated gaming system in the world so if mobile phones were impacting the dedicated gaming market(especially the portable one) it wouldn't be the number one selling dedicated gaming system in the world.

That is what I gathered from his comment.

[Haduken]

@LOGICWINS

"By the very fact that a lot of these games are free is what makes them more popular than the games on dedicated handhelds."

I think gamers enjoy quality more than free shovelware. just my take

[LOGICWINS]

That depends on the gamer. For me, console gaming is the way to go because I demand that high level of gaming as a hardcore gamer. Would most people want Uncharted like games on their phone? Of course...but here's the problem, most people are not willing to pay $250 + a memory card+the cost of a game to do it.

Everyone and their mother want "quality"..the question is how much people are willing to spend to experience this "quality". Download statistics have shown that most people gravitate to free crap as opposed to springing $40 on 3DS/Vita games with better production values and deeper gameplay. I enjoy gaming on my PS3, but as far as what most people want, the answers pretty clear.

In the end, ur right. Gamers want quality...its just that most of them aren't willing to pay for it. They are more concerned with being frugal than having the best gaming experience they can.

[Fylus]

I have to agree with Logic again here.

Just because a game is free doesn't mean it lacks quality. I mean, Angry Birds is free and look at ITS popularity. There are also plenty of other examples, for instance; games that I personally enjoy that I've picked up for free on Google Play's appstore would be Zenonia 4, Demon Hunter, and Immortal Dusk.

Also, look at DUST 514; a completely free AAA MMOFPS on PS3. From just the looks of it, I can tell that game will be revolutionary.

[Skywalker1234]

@fylus, he was agreeing with haduken

Usually when its free thats exactly what it means

angry birds is an example of a flash game thats been around forever selling well.

[Skywalker1234]

outside the box has it right

[_Aarix_]

Feel sorry for the idiots who Reacted by trashing ios and android games. Smartphones have good games and is as convient as can be but they are in no relation to consoles.

[lastdual]

Look, I understand that most mobile gaming devices aren't killers who ascribe to a radical ideology, but a disturbing number of them are, and they receive little in the way of ridicule from supposedly mainstream mobile gaming devices.

Innocent consoles are dying! This senseless violence needs to stop.

[vortis]

mobile is a completely different market, it's the fleeting casual market.

A lot of people keep thinking the core audience are abandoning consoles/PCs for mobile crap but it's just the fickle casuals. Those sheep would follow a wolf into it's den if it was a wearing a shirt with an Apple logo on it.

[joeorc]

"mobile is a completely different market, it's the fleeting casual market."

you an many others are just not getting it..look while i respect your opinion this perception about the mobile smartphone an tablet devices not being "hardcore" gaming and just casual market are overlooking one very important fact.

developers make the games right?
so developers use APi's and SDK tool chains to make those games right?

so if you and others have not noticed where is the main 3rd party game development tool chains an game engines being released now?

that's right the mobile market. This is not the mobile market of the Ngage, these devices today are more than viable to run more than just casual gaming experiences. The mobile market has changed quite alot since than.

epic's unreal game engine with advanced shader model's an lighting, physic's etc..and that game engine is now running on mobile chipsets that are in tablets and smartphones. Now its not just Epic, Unity 3D, Havok, idSoft's, Hell even Square's Game engine is now running on mobile chipset's.

the Mobile market just like it did to the Dedicated PDA market is absorbing the largest share, that does not mean the dedicated mobile game devices are less viable, it just means their no longer the largest chunk of the market.

why do you think both Microsoft an Sony are investing heavy into the smartphone market by making a unified game development platform's for game development on smartphones,Tablets an new low power chip laptops.

the reason is very simple the hardware these new smartdevices has is more than viable to run much higher quality game's than what mobile development platforms 7 years ago could not do. The change happened to be when your SOC..IE: system on a chip has a GPU core or multiple GPU cores that enable it to run such directX 11.4 , AND ADVANCED SHADER MODELS the exact kind that run on the PC.It was bound to Happen.

this is not the mobile gaming of 7 years ago!

[vortis]

@joeorc,

Really, Sherlock?

Of course more engines support mobile devices, it's a viable platform. But remember what the Rovio guys said, they had failed with like what, 50 something games before they hit gold with Angry Birds? It's a pot-shot in a big canyon for success.

A lot of people are jumping in but it doesn't guarantee anything because as I mentioned, it's the fleeting casual market.

How many other games like Infinity Blade made it past the 1 million mark? How many core games running on the Unity, like Shadowgun have even gone mainstream?

There's a lot of upcoming support for HTML5 as well but it doesn't mean Flash is just gonna die or people are gonna stop using Unity, etc., etc.

The API/SDKs are simply being used for multiple/cross-platform support, it's to help make development easier across a broad range of gaming devices and for easy port (something that just wasn't doable five years ago).

You can pop an iOS game onto PC or vice versa with a lot of engines. It's got nothing to do with "moving an entire market" into a different market space, it's just that they're expanding. But if you look at the sales, overall sales, MMOs is really where it's at.

[Saladfax]

Device consolidation may alter the basic ways (or places) people absorb their media.

However, the market exists for core gaming and likely will for many, many years, so developers will continue to make core games, whether they're on the traditional home console or the All-Mind cerebral interface.

[HammadTheBeast]

Winner Article is Winner.

[Hufandpuf]

So when this journalist says mobile games won't kill gaming, people agree. But when an analyst says it might, people say "He can't see into the future". Fail Logic

Not that mobile games will kill gaming, but it is becoming a big market for games in general.

[dragunrising]

I agree. We can only speculate- there are an infinite number of possibilities. Someone may accurately get it right however no one can tell the future. Lets hope this article is spot on.

[slayorofgods]

It seems like a "wii type" crowd is flocking to mobile gaming to me.. The Wii got big, but it never got close to killing the hardcore gaming rigs, (360, PS3, PC)

The reason I know mobile devices will not kill consoles is because I'm that hardcore crowd and won't flock to the Wii, mobile device or whatever trendy new thing comes out and my crowd will stay for a long time.

[Hufandpuf]

I'm a hardcore gamer too, but if there are less people willing to pay for AAA titles or consoles, they won't continue to make them and opt for the mobile gaming scene. Only time will tell.

[Bakkies]

Red Dead Redemption killed mine and "Half Nelson" killed my PS3. My Wii killed itself.

[Hicken]

I don't even know what people would think that mobile would kill ANYTHING. It's a completely different market.

People looking to buy something to play games on don't look at cell phones or tablets. They look at handhelds and consoles.

People looking to surf the web and be social and make some phone calls don't look at consoles or handhelds. They look at smartphones and tablets.

Seriously, what's so hard to figure out about that?

"Correlation does not equal causation." Don't know what it means?

Just because we've seen a rise in app gaming and a (somewhat arguable) decline in dedicated gaming does not mean the two events are related. For example, I've bought fewer games than ever these last few years; I haven't supplemented that with gaming on a mobile device. For another, it's a lot easier to justify shelling cash out for a multipurpose phone than for a single-purpose device, especially in the current economic climate.

The same justification is behind paying a dollar here or there for a game- or nothing, for that matter- as opposed to forking over the better half of a hundred dollars: it's so much easier to part with small bits of money at a time than a large chunk.

But all the people who BELIEVE that mobile gaming affects dedicated gaming conveniently forget about these things when they make their claims. Sensationalism and hits are all they're about; being reasonable or logical doesn't make sense, ironically enough.

[PaladinXII]

There are, unfortunately, a lot of people who are looking for a chance to claim the sky is falling.

If anything the market is *changing*, which is different than saying that one medium is killing another.

What we will see, over the long term, is people the age of my children feeling more comfortable investing in a new tablet rather than a console. But that's also probably two life-cycles away.

The point is that there *is* some canibalization of mind share. There is limited time and every moment that a core gamer spends on a mobile device instead of a PC, Xbox or PS3 helps drive that point home. There is a way to see all ships rise with the tide, but it's going to require strategy and forethought on the parts of manufacturers and publishers.

[Chrono]

But we can't deny that mobile phones convinced a huge portion of the "casual" gamers to move away from handheld consoles.

[Skywalker1234]

Actually we can deny that..........

The 3ds is selling more than any system nintendo has ever put out this early.....

So all we can conclusively say is casuals havent gone anywhere

[joeorc]

"Actually we can deny that..........

The 3ds is selling more than any system nintendo has ever put out this early.....

So all we can conclusively say is casuals havent gone anywhere"

in your opinion you can, but think about this for a sec. it takes roughly 6+ years or more for the dedicated game handheld to reach 100+ million units sold, which no one really could say that's not great number's. but the problem is it's not the largest market share anymore in gaming, and has not been for a while.

the fact that in one sales Quarter the Iphone sell over 14 million units, that does not include the ipad, the ipod touch. combined that's over 38 million sold per sales Quarter. Android powered devices combined are hitting 81 million sold per quarter.

just by the math alone both Nintendo an Sony's dedicated game handhelds combined do not have the largest market share. you can say but the market for Gaming. Stop right there, the smartdevices are using the exact same game engines now that dedicated developers use for their dedicated game handheld's for game development.

that's the truth of the matter when the smartphones an tablets are running advanced game engines the real key problem is control imput scheme, that was until the game pad support now runs native on smartphones an tablets.

if you have not noticed Microsoft an Sony both are doing just that. They have made unified game development platforms for smartdevices.

3rd party game engines like Epic's unreal, Unity 3D.etc.

the landscape has changed , some gamers an people may not like it but its the truth.

[catfrog]

im pretty sure the only people who was talking about mobile killing consoles was the media, now the media is going to tell us to calm down? send yourself some memos about it, youre the ones going crazy

[joeorc]

"im pretty sure the only people who was talking about mobile killing consoles was the media, now the media is going to tell us to calm down? send yourself some memos about it, youre the ones going crazy."

100% AGREEMENT!

I do not see how many of these media outlets an some gamers think that smartphones and other smartdevices will kill off the viability of dedicated game handhelds.

The point from many is they are not the same market. which is true in some cases, but in others its more of an overlap case of where the industry for mobile gaming is heading as a whole.

Take a look at this:

http://playstation.com/pss/...

please note the above did not include the PSVita, an soon to be released 3 new Playstation Suite powered xperia line 2012 budget line smartphones.

Now think about this for a sec:

Sony has done the following

a)Sony Ericsson Q3 2011 Results – 22m Xperia phones shipped to date; smartphones now 80% of sales

b)The company shipped 9.5 million units altogether in Q3 2011

Think about that for one sec. In one sales Quarter Sony has shipped. 9.5 million units. in 3 months and so far Nintendo in one year has a Total of almost 18 million, and Sony has shipped about 2 million PSVitas. in one year already Sony has over 22 million Playstation Suite certified devices already in the market!

Remember one of the main Sony's pillar's is the mobile section an they want to sell games to as many people as they can. The Playstation Suite is one such way to accomplish this task.Also the Playstation Suite will get 1st party Sony in house development studios that are making games for the Playstation Suite. With the Investment into the mobile handhelds for games the PSVita is not the only game handhelds Sony is supporting.

Does that mean the Nintendo 3DS or the PSVita are not a viable choice anymore to play games on?

THAT ANSWER IS A BIG:NO
All it Means is that the dedicated Game handheld systems in the over all market will have the smallest market share.Even with the smallest market share it's still very large.

Sony's current CEO Kaz outlined this early 2011 what Sony intended to do.

Sony has 'open stance' on OS for PlayStation Suite

"Sony says it is open to bringing the PlayStation Suite to other OSes in the future"

Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, said, "We have a completely open stance. With carriers and with hand set makers.

"There are a variety of operating systems, but we're focusing first on Android. There's also Windows, iOS and so forth, but we don't have the resources to make it compatible with everything from the start."

Evidently Sony sees getting maxiumum exposure across as many platforms as possible as the key to gaining a substantial share of the mobile gaming market.

http://www.knowyourmobile.c...

yes Even Apple iOS devices, would apple turn down playstation games for their platform? How about Microsoft?

the mobile gaming space is not just about the Nintendo an Sony game handhelds alone anymore.