Mobile Cements itself as the gaming platform of the future

Mohammed Babiker
Nov 4 · 3 min read

Mainstream gamers in the West would scoff at the idea of even considering mobile gamers as one of their own. “They aren’t real gamers!” is a common sentiment to be heard repeated on discord servers, forums and steam groups, the main hubs of the PC gaming community. Yet despite the distaste of the older gaming generation that grew up on playing video games on their consoles and PCs, mobile has been steadily and consistently taking over the gaming market since 2015.

The following image taken from MakeoverMonday, a platform for data enthusiasts to compete on developing the best visualization, shows how mobile has grown over the past decade at over double the rate of consoles and PCs.

Source : https://www.statista.com/chart/13789/worldwide-video-game-revenue-forecast/
Source : https://www.statista.com/chart/13789/worldwide-video-game-revenue-forecast/
Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/13789/worldwide-video-game-revenue-forecast/

However this visualization has one glaring weakness: As it focuses on percentage rather than values, it appears almost as if the other two gaming platforms, PC and Console, have not grown at all over the years but have rather stayed at the same amount while only mobile has grown due to how the size of the green and purple boxes never really changes. This also undersells the rapid growth of the mobile market, giving the impression that it grows at a normal rate against opponents who aren’t growing at all.

Furthermore, the visualization tries to sell PC as being the smallest market among the three, while it appears, and in fact is more or less neck and neck with its age old rival, console gaming.

In order to address these issues I have chosen to instead use animated bubble charts, also known as the Hans Rosling chart, in order to more accurately reflect the changes in the Global Gaming Market.

The year of 2012 starts with Consoles and PCs vying over the title of the most popular platform, with mobile trailing far behind. But as the years go by, mobile quickly catches up to the two big competitors, notably reaching the same market share as PC in 2015. Afterwards mobile gaming blazes past its competition, and is estimated to reach a ridiculous market share of 106 Billion by the end of 2021, almost three times that of the old gaming platforms.

It’s important to notice in the new visualization how the other two platforms are still growing, just not at quite the staggering rate of the new competition. While PC gaming is slightly lagging behind its rival, it and Console gaming both remain within few percentage points of each other.

So in summary: Mobile gaming is blowing up and is likely to keep doing so for the coming years, PC is in last place slightly behind Console, and both are growing but at a smaller size and pace to the new juggernaut of the Global Gaming Market.

A bit about the source: It focuses on the global gaming market and in some instances such as in this visualization groups similar platforms such as smartphone and tablet to one overarching platform (mobile) and downloaded PC games and browser PC games to PC. It also projects the values starting from the year of 2019, as it was released in 2018.

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