“The UK is now a smartphone society,” Ofcom declared last year, and growing numbers of us are using our smartphones not just for communication but for entertainment, including games.
So many people are playing games via mobile devices these days that it could pose a threat to the more traditional console market — but it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the games industry, according to Taka Kawasaki of Epic Games Japan.
In an interview with journalist and author John Szczepaniak published on Gamasutra, Kawasaki said that smartphone hardware is catching up with consoles and many consumers don’t care about the “richer, bigger experience” available when playing a console game via HD TV, with optimal controls.
“Some people care… My favourite analogy which I often use is: It’s like a camera. For ordinary people, the iPhone is good enough to shoot or take a picture. But some people, who really like photographs, they will dare to buy a huge, single-reflection lens. So the console game is something like that. People who dare to care are the only ones who buy. So I don’t think consoles will go away, or consoles will die. But rather the market size cannot be as huge as it used to be,” Kawasaki said.
“Those will be very difficult days for the console market, or rather the console makers. But it will be good for gamers, I believe. It will mean more than 3 or 4 billion consoles in people’s pockets, worldwide. It must be exciting days.
“If we look at the entire game market, including smartphones and PC, it’s getting bigger and bigger. Very soon hardware performance of smartphones will catch up and go over PS3 or even PS4. When it happens, we can say there are over a billion pieces of hardware with high-end games, all over the world, in people’s pockets. It is a super exciting vision for all game developers.”
Tags: Mobile gaming
