Smartphones have become the most popular device for playing on digital games, according to a new survey of 10,000 consumers across 10 countries released by PayPal.
The survey found that 78% of the US respondents play digital games on their smartphones, compared with 59% on tablets and 47% on laptops.
However, gamers spent more time and money on games played on PCs and gaming consoles:
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When asked about the amount of time they spend playing a mobile game, the most popular choice was 30 minutes to one hour.
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When asked the same question about playing games on PCs and gaming consoles, the most popular choice among the respondents was one to two hours.
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That’s lower than the reported average spend on PC gaming ($17 per month) and spend on games for gaming consoles ($22 per month), according to the survey data.
PayPal commissioned the report from SuperData Research, which predicted that mobile gaming would account for $37.6 billion of the worldwide $77.3 billion digital gaming market by the end of this year.
Gaming developers are experimenting with new ways to monetize the increasing engagement among mobile users with mobile games. For example, developers are starting to offer rewarded advertising, which offer in-game rewards for watching an ad in the gaming app.
This allows developers to monetize games without requiring the gamers to purchase anything. Developers can also use targeted in-app messages and push notifications to persuade users to make in-app purchases.
Over the better part of the past decade, developers have flocked to create mobile games as smartphones became a mainstream consumer device. Technological evolutions including faster processors, larger screens, more input points, and better overall graphics capabilities, combined with dropping prices, brought the ability for gaming via smartphone to audiences larger than ever before.
In that growth and through that transition, smartphones as a gaming arena experienced its own evolution. More developers flocked to this medium, and the gaming sections of app stores became saturated. While mobile gaming apps using an up-front paid downloading model, wherein consumers paid a typically nominal fee to download an app, flourished in the early days of mobile gaming, the deluge of apps led to a change in monetization strategy.
More apps started using the free-to-play (F2P) model, wherein a consumer can download an app for free, and is then later monetized either via in-app purchases or in-app advertising. Since that transition, most consumers have been conditioned to expect quality mobile gaming apps for little or no cost.
- Business Insider