Is Mobile Gaming Ready to Take Over the Living Room?
Mobile gamers who have always wanted to play their favourite time wasters on the big screen are going to get their wish. Word has it that soon mega-hit mobile games like Game of War and Candy Crush will playable directly from your television while you go head to head with your friends and family in real life.
Apple recently revealed its updated Apple TV device complete with a fancy, newfangled gaming controller. It looks like company has its sights set on an untapped casual gaming market: the one at home. The casual gaming and specifically the mobile market are far too big to be denied, with revenues from this year expected to surpass that of console games in excess of $30 billion (with a “B”). The new Apple TV will allow multiple users to be able to play their favourite apps directly on the big screen instead of on their individual smartphones.
One of the biggest complaints about casual gaming is the stereotype of seeing an entire family or group of friends in a room together, but no one is talking to each other and they’re all gaming on their phones. Chris DeWolfe, CEO of mobile gaming company SGN, told NPR that “…there may be certain instances where you want to play a game with your whole family and it could be game night.”
Where consoles can present a complex stumbling block for some casual gamers, the simple design and pick-up-and-play nature of mobile games appeal to a much wider audience, making them ideal for families and community spaces. The new focus on app-based gaming in the home could also be translated well to other shared spaces outside of the home. The rise of casual gaming in public spaces could help to further develop the increasingly social aspect of casual gaming beyond just online connectivity. You may have seen more than a few bars that keep a gaming console hooked up, but what if it was an Apple TV instead that anyone could load their gaming apps onto to play together?
Popular casual games like cards or bingo that were once played around a dining room table with friends or a group of people at a rec hall are now largely played on mobile devices with little to no interaction between players. Through the use of a shared app, friends and families could use any game with an iOS app to play together through the new TV box and turn their own homes into a cozy casino. Gala Bingo is one such gaming platform that has seen much success in the mobile market with games that adapt as well to group play as they do to gaming on the go through its adaptations of classic leisure games typically reserved for larger groups. Gaming Intelligence reports that the mobile market has been a boon for the company with online net revenue showing a 37 percent year-on-year increase, which made up for 21 percent of the total net revenue in 2015 (as of July).
However, James Gwertzman, a chief executive at PlayFab, thinks differently. He believes that success for the Apple TV will come not from trying to compete on the same level as AAA consoles but converting a new market or transferring the mobile market to the home. “It’s a totally different experience,” Gwertzman told The New York Times. “Xbox and PlayStation have been very successful at building those living room experiences, and Apple and Android have been very good at ‘play a game on the bus’ experiences.”
