The Shift In Portable Gaming

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This from MacRumours this morning:

Mobile analytics firm Flurry today reports on the continuing shift in portable gaming from dedicated devices to smartphones and other multipurpose devices. According to results compiled by Flurry from NPD market research and Flurry’s own mobile app data, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems will account for 58% of portable gaming revenue in the United States for 2011, an almost exact flip-flop from 2010 when dedicated device leaders Nintendo and Sony held 57% of the market.

(Read more here)

This is pretty eventful news. As Nintendo’s 3DS continues to struggle to gain a foothold in the market, despite a pretty sizeable price cut, and as Sony continues the hype for the launch of of PSP Vita, we learn that portable gaming is overwhelmingly going mobile. People don’t appear to be so interested in paying premium prices for large games on dedicated handheld units. Not when the option of cheap, bit size games that can be picked up and put down on a whim are available for high cost mobile devices that they already own and carry with them as a matter of course.

Gaming in the home is already pretty expensive in today’s economic climate, with XBox 360 and PS3 games averaging around £40 for a new copy. These are the high production value games that people want to sit down, involve themselves in and experience. Portable gaming has always been about dipping into and out of something on the go. Sure, graphics and gameplay have always been important, but are people really going to be so eager to be presented with epic stories on expensive, graphically capable machines when they’re on the tube, train or bus? Especially when they may have to break away from their quest at any moment? Not when you can lose yourself in a level or three of Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies which play just as well for no more than £1.99. Big name game developers can’t compete with that, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that not only does the consumer public know this, they’re perfectly happy with it.

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• Dated: November 10, 2011