**The Unstable Economy of Mobile Gaming**

The economic factor that affects mobile gaming is multifaceted and complex. One significant aspect is the sheer number of smaller companies, often with fewer than 50 employees, that develop mobile games. These companies may not have the resources or manpower to create visually stunning games, and their users' expectations are different from those of console gamers. Mobile games need to stand on their own and succeed individually, without relying on past success or word-of-mouth to sustain them.

This is partly due to the nature of mobile gaming itself. Unlike console gaming, which provides an immersive experience that players return to for hours at a time, mobile games are often designed to be quick, bite-sized experiences that players can jump in and out of between other activities. This shift in user behavior has led developers to focus on creating simple, practical games that appeal to a broader audience. As a result, the games themselves may not be as sophisticated or engaging as their console counterparts.

Another significant challenge facing mobile game developers is the limited resources available to them. Mobile phones are designed to be portable and convenient, which means they have to balance the need for gaming performance with the need to conserve battery life. This can limit the types of games that can be developed and the level of complexity that can be achieved. Additionally, mobile phones are not typically used for gaming alone; they are also used for communication, browsing, and other activities that require significant processing power.

**The Rise and Fall of Mobile Gaming Hype**

In the early days of mobile gaming, there was a lot of hype surrounding its potential to revolutionize the industry. Many predicted that mobile gaming would surpass console gaming in popularity, with some even calling it "the end" for traditional gaming. However, this hype was largely fueled by the novelty of smartphones and the fact that people were experimenting with new ways to play games on their devices.

As users became more familiar with mobile gaming, their expectations changed. Instead of expecting a full-fledged console experience, players began to see mobile games as convenient, bite-sized experiences that they could jump into between other activities. This shift in user behavior has led developers to focus on creating simple, practical games that appeal to a broader audience.

**The Benefits of Mobile Gaming**

So what benefits do mobile games offer, despite their limitations? One significant advantage is the convenience and portability of mobile gaming. Players can pick up their phone at any time and jump into a game that they've saved or purchased before. This convenience factor has led many developers to focus on creating games that are easy to pick up and play in short sessions.

Mobile games also offer a level of accessibility that console games cannot match. With a mobile device, players can access a vast library of games without having to purchase multiple consoles or devices. Additionally, the cost savings of mobile gaming mean that users can afford to buy more games than they might be able to with console gaming.

**The Impact of Marketing and Advertising**

Marketing and advertising play a significant role in shaping our perceptions of mobile games and the industry as a whole. The rise of affiliate marketing and coupon codes has led many players to associate mobile games with savings and discounts. Sites like Honey, which automatically applies coupon codes when users are ready to purchase, have become an essential tool for gamers looking to save money on their purchases.

However, this shift in user behavior also raises questions about the value we place on mobile gaming. If players can get the same product at a lower price by using coupons or looking for deals online, do they really need to pay full price for it? This is a question that many developers are grappling with as they try to balance their desire to create high-quality games with the need to compete on price.

**The Future of Mobile Gaming**

Looking ahead, it's likely that mobile gaming will continue to evolve and adapt to changing user behavior. Developers will need to find ways to create engaging experiences that appeal to a broader audience, while also addressing concerns about value and accessibility. As the industry continues to grow and mature, we can expect to see more innovative solutions emerge that address these challenges and take mobile gaming to new heights.

In particular, developers may focus on creating games that offer unique benefits or advantages over console gaming. This could include augmented reality experiences, multiplayer games that are designed specifically for mobile devices, or other innovations that leverage the unique characteristics of smartphones. By embracing the opportunities and challenges of mobile gaming, developers can create experiences that truly take advantage of this emerging platform.

**The Role of Gaming in Our Lives**

Mobile gaming may have a profound impact on our daily lives, particularly as we become increasingly reliant on our smartphones for communication, entertainment, and other activities. As gamers, it's essential to be aware of the role that mobile gaming is playing in shaping our expectations and behaviors.

By understanding the unique characteristics of mobile gaming, we can begin to appreciate its value and significance. Mobile games may not offer the same level of immersion or complexity as console games, but they do provide a convenient, accessible way for players to engage with games on-the-go. As we look to the future of gaming, it's essential to recognize the potential benefits and challenges of mobile gaming and to explore new ways in which we can harness its power.

By embracing the diversity and innovation of mobile gaming, we can create experiences that truly take advantage of this emerging platform and push the boundaries of what is possible. Whether you're a seasoned gamer or just starting out, there's never been a better time to join the world of mobile gaming.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: endo you remember when mobile games used to look like this and this like this all of these were from over a decade ago these games were released at a time when we were still using iPhone 4S or a Samsung Galaxy S3 in a best case scenario and so why now that we have phones like the iPhone 14 pro and Samsung s23 Ultra friends that are literally 50 times more powerful do most games still not really look any better in the same time frame we've seen gaming consoles go from PS3 Graphics that look like this to pierce Graphics that look like this and the mobile gaming market now even makes more money than the console market so time to find out why the mobile games themselves haven't stepped up in the same way well the first part of the puzzle is that not all phones are getting more powerful at the same rate but check this out so this is a new flagship phone the Galaxy s23 Ultra versus one of the company's older flagships the Galaxy S7 Edge and running this performance test you can see basically an eight times performance jump just in a few years and that's not even factoring in all the other benefits of just having newer Tech in your phone but if we do the same thing on the budget end of the spectrum a brand new budget phone versus an older budget phone with the same time Gap and the performance Improvement is Tiny while on the flagship end we've gone up by over a million points in performance on the budget and we've barely gone up 70 000. now there is a reason for that at the entry level of the market people just want different things to what Flagship users want like even if every single year companies could put more and more capable processors in that money is often better spent just sticking with a processor that's good enough and then spending the extra money upgrading the screen quality or the camera quality and so what this all means is that while we're constantly hearing about how phones are getting faster and faster that progression is only really happening at the top tier Flagship end and not trickling down through to cheaper phones like we expected it would 10 years ago and so we're now at a stage where the power gap between the very highest end phones and the Very lowest end phones has never been wider so if you're a mobile game developer now and you can either make a great looking game that only 30 of phones are going to be able to run properly or make a bad looking game that everyone can play which are you gonna pick but the store doesn't fully explain why the vast majority of games don't look significantly better so right now I'm running a racing game from 2013 on the top and a racing game from 2022 at the bottom it's really hard to tell the difference I mean yeah the reflections on the car look better in 2022 but then I would actually say the sky looks better in 2013 as it does the amount of stuff that they've actually added into the map but there's another Factor that's holding back mobile games from leveling up in the same way that console games have the fragmentation see if you're making a game for PlayStation 5 you can build the game for PS5 you can look at all the components available the Technologies it supports and make the absolute best looking game possible that can take advantage of all of them yeah sure you might also make a version for PS4 and maybe a PC Port too but because there's such few platforms each version of the game is its own distinct development project that's optimized for that platform yeah apart from you cyberpunk but you can't optimize like that when there's a thousand possible different devices literally that people could be using like there are with phones and so what this means is not just that you have to cater to the lowest common denominator the weakest phone Hardware on the market but also that you can't take advantage of the strengths of anyone's Hardware like for example the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that basically every top-end Android phone is powered by right now is an absolute monster it supports like 15 different super Advanced Gaming Technologies even the same Ray tracing in games just like the PS5 can but I've been using a phone with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 inside of it and I can't find one properly retraced Android game I'm not exaggerating here zero percent of Android games at least ones that aren't in beta have Ray tracing let's call it 0.0001 just in case I've missed a few but the PS5 because the games are designed around it has Ray tracing in almost 40 of its titles because there are just so many different phones each one with their own strengths and weaknesses developers just have no monetary incentive to program in advanced features like Ray tracing it's just a big investment to make the experience five percent better for two percenter players whereas for PS5 because every console is identical adding Ray tracing is going to benefit every user and so we'll actually add value to your game and sell more copies and let's talk about this monetization because this is the key thing that I think turns a majority of developers off when it comes to mobile see the way that the big budget console gaming Market works is you have a few main AAA developers they'll spend Millions working with teams of hundreds of people to make their next game they'll announce it and then they'll sell it charging 70 up front per copy now because these tend to be big companies with a reputation with established distribution Channels with connections to get their games right in front of viewers eyes and because they'll earn back their investment very quickly assuming the game is good it's not a super high risk Endeavor you can take your time developing you can invest Millions making sure that your game supports all the latest Technologies because in most cases you know that you're going to make your money back this is not the case on mobile the mobile gaming Market is super easy to enter and therefore also super competitive the majority of games fail plus even if you succeed you have to jump through far more Hoops to start making money from them the default assumption with a mobile game is now that it's going to be free and so even when you get your users your job is not done there you have to also get your players completely invested in your game you don't just need a few thousand downloads you need a competitive thriving Community before players will even think about taking out their wallet to buy power-ups or customization skins within it and the truth of it is sometimes that's out of your control sometimes well most of the time really the concept of the game just doesn't stick with the masses and so instead of wasting years making it look nice and pretty and Polished you can minimize your risk by making the game just look good enough and then chucking it into the void early to see if people actually like the concept I'd say it's quite easy to look at the games that have done well on mobile by going on the top charts and things like that and just thinking that all mobile games do that well but the truth of it is it is a graveyard out there like if you could sort the play store or the app store by most recently added games and just see everything that's getting put onto there you'd see it at 99 of these games just disappear into nothingness no one finds them no one plays them plus if your game is less demanding to run it's likely to mean that more people are going to be able to try it and you're giving it the best chance to become a big game that actually has some Buzz about it which is kind of the opposite of how it works when you're making a console game the other economic factor is just the simple fact that most mobile game developers are smaller companies like if we just have a look at the top three games on the iPhone right now you do find quite a few sizable Brands you get a lot of companies who've kind of figured out what makes mobile games work and then they've just made like a ton of them but if you look a little deeper you'll find that the vast majority of companies making mobile games are 50 employees or less like a snake IO this is a huge game made by cool apps two apps number of employees 26. in companies like this often just don't have the physical Manpower or resources to make visually stunning games and because their users aren't paying upfront at the point of downloading their game these developers can't Coast on past success or word of mouth or establish distribution channels to have repeat successes every game needs to stand on its own and has to succeed on its own to have its own economy you're probably starting to see why mobile game devs are not constantly out there trying to make the next Crisis a couple of logistical issues too like the fact that in the last 10 years we've still not figured out how to make touch screen controls feel satisfying I mean yeah there's gaming grips there's some gaming phones that have baked and triggers there's gamer goo that reduces the sweatiness of your fingers but let's be honest only like three percent of the market is actually buying these things and so games are not being built for them especially not the gamer good God my trousers I promise buzzer it was Game ago plus the battery life issue we've got a number of phones are much more than just gaming devices we need our phones to make phone calls and to be reachable so if you jumped on to an hour of full-on console quality Call of Duty on your phone but then exited the app and realized you only had five percent battery remaining wouldn't be very happy about that right so unlike with consoles and PC that are plugged into a wall and can draw as much power as they need to to run at their best there's a lot of constraints that are put into place on phones to actually stop them doing that so that you can use them for other things but I think the single most important thing to bear in mind here is that people think about Mobile gaming differently to other kinds of gaming there was definitely a time when games on phones were accelerating in popularity in like 2012. we're looking at the number of players doubling every six months it definitely felt like the end was here for consoles Wyatt actually even went as far as to Crown The Game's console dead but then I realized a few things one that you can't just take the way that something is currently growing as proof of how it will grow there's reasons why the growth was particularly high at the start lots of people were getting smartphones for the first time it was a novelty people were curious about what a smartphone could do so it would experiment more and more experimentation leads to Rapid growth it meant that developers were testing the boundaries more and therefore making more progress but nowadays we've almost settled on the realization that people don't really play on their phones as a console replacement they play mostly just to fill time the phone's got different benefits to traditional gaming it's not this hyper immersive get comfortable on a sofa big screen experience the console gaming is but it is super convenient it's the games that you'll always have with you and that you'll want to jump into you for 15 minutes at a time in between other things and so because the purpose of mobile games is less about embellishment and more about the practicality it turns out that it's not just developer unwillingness but most users of mobile games are also perfectly happy just to have a simple looking title that's quick to jump in and out of you know what else is quick to jump in and out of hey pal honey it sits in the background of your online experience you basically forget it's there until it comes to buying something so recently I've been buying a lot of extreme Toys For an upcoming video and I just remember being right on the cusp of clicking by for this drone that I saw until they've Al honey popped up out of nowhere I was like no you don't you can get the exact same product just at a lower price if you go to this link instead and then when there isn't a cheaper website to buy it from you just tap the honey button in your browser and it will automatically search through currently available coupon codes for the website you're on and apply the one that saves you the most money and on average when it finds a coupon code you are saving 18 off the product's price on websites that you're already shopping on it doesn't make sense to not be using this so just add it to your browser now for free joinhoney.com bossdo you remember when mobile games used to look like this and this like this all of these were from over a decade ago these games were released at a time when we were still using iPhone 4S or a Samsung Galaxy S3 in a best case scenario and so why now that we have phones like the iPhone 14 pro and Samsung s23 Ultra friends that are literally 50 times more powerful do most games still not really look any better in the same time frame we've seen gaming consoles go from PS3 Graphics that look like this to pierce Graphics that look like this and the mobile gaming market now even makes more money than the console market so time to find out why the mobile games themselves haven't stepped up in the same way well the first part of the puzzle is that not all phones are getting more powerful at the same rate but check this out so this is a new flagship phone the Galaxy s23 Ultra versus one of the company's older flagships the Galaxy S7 Edge and running this performance test you can see basically an eight times performance jump just in a few years and that's not even factoring in all the other benefits of just having newer Tech in your phone but if we do the same thing on the budget end of the spectrum a brand new budget phone versus an older budget phone with the same time Gap and the performance Improvement is Tiny while on the flagship end we've gone up by over a million points in performance on the budget and we've barely gone up 70 000. now there is a reason for that at the entry level of the market people just want different things to what Flagship users want like even if every single year companies could put more and more capable processors in that money is often better spent just sticking with a processor that's good enough and then spending the extra money upgrading the screen quality or the camera quality and so what this all means is that while we're constantly hearing about how phones are getting faster and faster that progression is only really happening at the top tier Flagship end and not trickling down through to cheaper phones like we expected it would 10 years ago and so we're now at a stage where the power gap between the very highest end phones and the Very lowest end phones has never been wider so if you're a mobile game developer now and you can either make a great looking game that only 30 of phones are going to be able to run properly or make a bad looking game that everyone can play which are you gonna pick but the store doesn't fully explain why the vast majority of games don't look significantly better so right now I'm running a racing game from 2013 on the top and a racing game from 2022 at the bottom it's really hard to tell the difference I mean yeah the reflections on the car look better in 2022 but then I would actually say the sky looks better in 2013 as it does the amount of stuff that they've actually added into the map but there's another Factor that's holding back mobile games from leveling up in the same way that console games have the fragmentation see if you're making a game for PlayStation 5 you can build the game for PS5 you can look at all the components available the Technologies it supports and make the absolute best looking game possible that can take advantage of all of them yeah sure you might also make a version for PS4 and maybe a PC Port too but because there's such few platforms each version of the game is its own distinct development project that's optimized for that platform yeah apart from you cyberpunk but you can't optimize like that when there's a thousand possible different devices literally that people could be using like there are with phones and so what this means is not just that you have to cater to the lowest common denominator the weakest phone Hardware on the market but also that you can't take advantage of the strengths of anyone's Hardware like for example the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that basically every top-end Android phone is powered by right now is an absolute monster it supports like 15 different super Advanced Gaming Technologies even the same Ray tracing in games just like the PS5 can but I've been using a phone with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 inside of it and I can't find one properly retraced Android game I'm not exaggerating here zero percent of Android games at least ones that aren't in beta have Ray tracing let's call it 0.0001 just in case I've missed a few but the PS5 because the games are designed around it has Ray tracing in almost 40 of its titles because there are just so many different phones each one with their own strengths and weaknesses developers just have no monetary incentive to program in advanced features like Ray tracing it's just a big investment to make the experience five percent better for two percenter players whereas for PS5 because every console is identical adding Ray tracing is going to benefit every user and so we'll actually add value to your game and sell more copies and let's talk about this monetization because this is the key thing that I think turns a majority of developers off when it comes to mobile see the way that the big budget console gaming Market works is you have a few main AAA developers they'll spend Millions working with teams of hundreds of people to make their next game they'll announce it and then they'll sell it charging 70 up front per copy now because these tend to be big companies with a reputation with established distribution Channels with connections to get their games right in front of viewers eyes and because they'll earn back their investment very quickly assuming the game is good it's not a super high risk Endeavor you can take your time developing you can invest Millions making sure that your game supports all the latest Technologies because in most cases you know that you're going to make your money back this is not the case on mobile the mobile gaming Market is super easy to enter and therefore also super competitive the majority of games fail plus even if you succeed you have to jump through far more Hoops to start making money from them the default assumption with a mobile game is now that it's going to be free and so even when you get your users your job is not done there you have to also get your players completely invested in your game you don't just need a few thousand downloads you need a competitive thriving Community before players will even think about taking out their wallet to buy power-ups or customization skins within it and the truth of it is sometimes that's out of your control sometimes well most of the time really the concept of the game just doesn't stick with the masses and so instead of wasting years making it look nice and pretty and Polished you can minimize your risk by making the game just look good enough and then chucking it into the void early to see if people actually like the concept I'd say it's quite easy to look at the games that have done well on mobile by going on the top charts and things like that and just thinking that all mobile games do that well but the truth of it is it is a graveyard out there like if you could sort the play store or the app store by most recently added games and just see everything that's getting put onto there you'd see it at 99 of these games just disappear into nothingness no one finds them no one plays them plus if your game is less demanding to run it's likely to mean that more people are going to be able to try it and you're giving it the best chance to become a big game that actually has some Buzz about it which is kind of the opposite of how it works when you're making a console game the other economic factor is just the simple fact that most mobile game developers are smaller companies like if we just have a look at the top three games on the iPhone right now you do find quite a few sizable Brands you get a lot of companies who've kind of figured out what makes mobile games work and then they've just made like a ton of them but if you look a little deeper you'll find that the vast majority of companies making mobile games are 50 employees or less like a snake IO this is a huge game made by cool apps two apps number of employees 26. in companies like this often just don't have the physical Manpower or resources to make visually stunning games and because their users aren't paying upfront at the point of downloading their game these developers can't Coast on past success or word of mouth or establish distribution channels to have repeat successes every game needs to stand on its own and has to succeed on its own to have its own economy you're probably starting to see why mobile game devs are not constantly out there trying to make the next Crisis a couple of logistical issues too like the fact that in the last 10 years we've still not figured out how to make touch screen controls feel satisfying I mean yeah there's gaming grips there's some gaming phones that have baked and triggers there's gamer goo that reduces the sweatiness of your fingers but let's be honest only like three percent of the market is actually buying these things and so games are not being built for them especially not the gamer good God my trousers I promise buzzer it was Game ago plus the battery life issue we've got a number of phones are much more than just gaming devices we need our phones to make phone calls and to be reachable so if you jumped on to an hour of full-on console quality Call of Duty on your phone but then exited the app and realized you only had five percent battery remaining wouldn't be very happy about that right so unlike with consoles and PC that are plugged into a wall and can draw as much power as they need to to run at their best there's a lot of constraints that are put into place on phones to actually stop them doing that so that you can use them for other things but I think the single most important thing to bear in mind here is that people think about Mobile gaming differently to other kinds of gaming there was definitely a time when games on phones were accelerating in popularity in like 2012. we're looking at the number of players doubling every six months it definitely felt like the end was here for consoles Wyatt actually even went as far as to Crown The Game's console dead but then I realized a few things one that you can't just take the way that something is currently growing as proof of how it will grow there's reasons why the growth was particularly high at the start lots of people were getting smartphones for the first time it was a novelty people were curious about what a smartphone could do so it would experiment more and more experimentation leads to Rapid growth it meant that developers were testing the boundaries more and therefore making more progress but nowadays we've almost settled on the realization that people don't really play on their phones as a console replacement they play mostly just to fill time the phone's got different benefits to traditional gaming it's not this hyper immersive get comfortable on a sofa big screen experience the console gaming is but it is super convenient it's the games that you'll always have with you and that you'll want to jump into you for 15 minutes at a time in between other things and so because the purpose of mobile games is less about embellishment and more about the practicality it turns out that it's not just developer unwillingness but most users of mobile games are also perfectly happy just to have a simple looking title that's quick to jump in and out of you know what else is quick to jump in and out of hey pal honey it sits in the background of your online experience you basically forget it's there until it comes to buying something so recently I've been buying a lot of extreme Toys For an upcoming video and I just remember being right on the cusp of clicking by for this drone that I saw until they've Al honey popped up out of nowhere I was like no you don't you can get the exact same product just at a lower price if you go to this link instead and then when there isn't a cheaper website to buy it from you just tap the honey button in your browser and it will automatically search through currently available coupon codes for the website you're on and apply the one that saves you the most money and on average when it finds a coupon code you are saving 18 off the product's price on websites that you're already shopping on it doesn't make sense to not be using this so just add it to your browser now for free joinhoney.com boss\n"