Mobile Gaming, New Media Ecosystem; Audience Expectations & Usability; Viral Marketing

(source: Digital Tend, 2011)

A news that related to today's mobile gaming has been reported in Guardian Technology on 19th May 2011, titled with 'Angry Birds: 200m downloads are the tip of the mobile gaming iceberg'. This shows that the rapid growing usage of smart phone trend has increased the mobile gaming industry.  The article also stated that the traditional gaming device like PSP has been replaced by the new technology mobile devices like smart phones. As mention in MobileBeat, Takahashi (2011) stated that gamers have a big shift in attitudes expanding to the other available game platforms in stead of in the traditional ways of gaming like PC games. A 2011 PopCap Games mobile phone gaming research also explains the reason of huge amount of investment has inclined in mobile gaming trend and the reason of the mobile devices have become the center of innovating in gaming which is due to the trend of smart phones.

An important part of the story in the months to come will be of the developers and publishers seduced by these success stories who end up finding that not everyone can find their fortune in the apps world. 

-Guardian Technology

 The successful story of Angry Bird has attracted many developers and publishers to invest in the mobile gaming industry but some of them failed. As mentioned in Digital Darwinism, Vollmer (2010), stated that 'in the new marketing and media ecosystem, some will fail, some will thrive, and all will have to evolve.

That said, it would be good to see some research on how many games developers and publishers are losing money on the App Store. 

-Guardian Technology 

The article Who's making all the money in App store? in The App Whisperer has explained the reason of success and fail in investing on mobile gaming. It shows the costs of develop the apps, cost factoring, time factoring, the return, and the chances of success on the development. However, the research of PopCap also shows that there is a positive trend upwards of spending on the mobile game from year 2009 to year 2011. Take the developer of Angry Birds as an example, Rovio whose published the products with neither unique nor laying a foundation in mobile gaming, it has successful to hit the trend as most people with smart phones tend to follow the trend. They want games and will continuously download disproportionately.