Basically came here to say this, convenience and free. Not really a sign of anything besides more people getting into gaming in general especially during the covid shutdowns
Availability and psycologicaly manipulated addiction. There have been videos online for years from gaming monetization conferences giving out a road map to addicting people. It isn't like it's a big secret. Too bad Devs don't care to defend us like they defended themselves over Unity trying a microtransaction whammy.
I disagree. It might not have hit the mainstream news cycle as much as the recent controversy, but we already were on a rodeo with Unity last year when they aquired ironsource with the specific goal to push monitization on developers as a central design focus early on in production.
Many developers weren't interested in prioritizing a maximization of profit at the cost of their creative goals. Apparently John Riccitiello (Unity CEO) couldn't grasp why so many devs weren't willing to turn their games into glorified virtual casinos, calling them "fucking idiots" in the process.
Edit: If you've missed the whole ordeal this video by Bellular does a decent job at summarizing it: https://youtu.be/Rg6FbN_BqM... Later on Riccitiello apologized and promised to do better, but we know how that turned out.
If you want to split hairs you could argue that those devs weren't defending gamers, but their self-interest for creative freedom, but in the same way you could probably argue that most gamers wouldn't have defended developers in the recent plans of Unity to change their business model, if they didn't think it would have an impact on the games they would be playing.
The point is, when the interest of gamers and developers are aligned, the distinction of self-interest vs. altruism becomes somewhat meaningless. If you want to draw a line, draw it between people who care about the medium as an artform and the suits who only care about it as a means of extracting money.
Granted there are developers on both sides of that line, but the reason many people even decided to become game developers is because they're passionate about video games and the last thing they'd want to see is the degeneration of that medium.
It's been known for years south park even made fun of the concept of f2p but no one has a solution.
I've always hated mobile games they all feel like they are designed to appeal to kids the predatory tactics are shocking to see just how extortionary they are.
Back in the 90s I'd never imagine buying a PS1 or N64 game and being told that's great but you have to pay 500 dollars to see how this season ends.
I think if kids saw the amount of content we actually had in full release games the addiction to mobile games would lessen because it's a real problem
Because a lot of people don't like being glued to their couch and tethered to a giant TV screen. That was my main draw to the Nintendo switch and steam deck. And years before that the psp and vita.
Do you play you handhelds while you are walking and standing in lines? As Shinoff said, I might be too old. I don't even take my phone with me when I leave the house.
I have my phone in me at all times and don't play games. My position at work, I'm constantly being text or called about something. I'll usually call my girl or come on n4g on breaks. Never really thought about playing a cell phone game. I did talk up xcom 2 to a guy at work. He did. Liked it so much he bought it on sale for Xbox to. Dudes mid 20s so maybe it is an age thing.?
A phone can do everything, just not very good at gaming, a switch is dedicated to gaming and its compromised in every aspect you mentioned lol Plus carrying a switch around is abnormal and quite nerdy to a fault
"Controls are worse, sound is worse, graphics are worse, games are overall worse." If we force phone users to utilize integrated controls only - the touchscreen alone - yeah those are in basically every single way significantly worse for gaming. Here's the problem... phone users are limited to touchscreens in most games. Most phones can use the Nvidia Shield, and Xbox gamepads as well as DS4 and DualSense on newer phones with most if not all newer games supporting all the above and sometimes K/M too. So, when using the touchscreen the controls in almost every game is unequivocally horrible, but there are some with decent good or - dare I say it - great touchscreen controls. The latter is far and few inbetween but the reality is some PHONE GAMES were actually made to play well on a PHONE... crazy, I know.
Sound is worse? What do you mean? In totality I agree and due to limited text space I will just say that this has more to do with the number of sound files that can be played at once and how they can be mixed on the fly. As far as individual sound assets are concerned, they can be every bit as good as those on a state-of-the-art PC never mind PS5/XS, PS4/XO and older or weaker systems.
Graphics are worse... this is 100% garbage at this point. Phones are running console games at resolutions that actually beggar belief... this leads into "Games are overall worse..." Alien: Isolation is one such game I can run on my phone at 23FPS... Ok, that sounds bad... until you realize it is running in a FHD+ wider than 16:9 aspect ratio with a vertical resolution locked at 1440 with no dynamic resolution with settings set higher than PC's highest settings... yeah. We somehow get full resolution planar reflections on mobile... now in fairness I haven't played the PC version so maybe on PC Alien: Isolation has full res planar reflections... but the mobile devs (Feral Interactive) argued that the PC version doesn't.
This brings us to "A Switch is better in every aspect." It simply isn't. Switch has a lower res display with poorer battery life, a dimmer OLED display lacking HDR weaker speakers, it isn't water or dust proof and does far less.
That all said, I don't prefer playing on phones. I'd rather use the PS Portal to stream from my PS5 than use my phone to do the same thing because I'd rather my phone be available for more important things... like receiving and making calls. If I had a Switch I'd rather play on that than a phone, but to say phones are worse in every way... that is laughable.
It's apparently being 'soaring' for ages and I'm surprised we still have console and PC games, since mobile gaming was supposed to make those obsolete like a decade ago.
One thing is the games are not $70+ Second thing is everyone has access to smartphones. Even senior people are paying for smartphone games and in app purchases.
$70 will never be a bargain unless it is a console purchase. $70 next to a free game is not comparable! 🤷🏾 New games are $70. What year are living in?!?
Because everyone has a phone and they do have some half decent games and a lot of them are free, with MTs of course.
Was this article written by ChatGPT?
Barrier of entry. Everyone has a phone and most games are either very cheap or F2P.
Being lazy
Availability and psycologicaly manipulated addiction. There have been videos online for years from gaming monetization conferences giving out a road map to addicting people. It isn't like it's a big secret. Too bad Devs don't care to defend us like they defended themselves over Unity trying a microtransaction whammy.