The COVID 19 pandemic may have been a huge hurdle to many industries but this doesn’t seem to be the case for the mobile gaming sector. When the pandemic started last year, there were plenty of reports that showed how mobile gaming has increased and this was mainly because of lockdowns. People had to stay at home and find indoor activities to help them deal with the health crisis, and many did resort to online and mobile gaming.
Since then, the trend for mobile gaming continued to go up, and based on reports, around two-third of gamers also increased the number of hours they play within a day. The IDC and LoopMe also reported that around 6 percent of mobile gamers today haven’t played any game on their tablets or smartphones before the pandemic. Overall, there was a 12 percent increase in mobile gaming in the first quarter of this year compared to how it was in the Q1 of 2019 (pre-pandemic).
People would play all sorts of mobile games nowadays including real money games like an Online Roulette with Live Dealer. What makes mobile gaming also more interesting is the variety and quality of games that people can play nowadays. More and more mobile games are becoming console-like and are also available to play on other gaming devices.
Will the Trend Continue to Rise?
The report from IDC and LoopMe also stated that the 75 percent growth in mobile gaming will continue indefinitely. Surely, many are wondering whether this will still be a big thing once things start to settle, and given the fact that mobile gaming still did great for the Q1 of 2021, there seems to be nothing that will stop the growth of this gaming sector.
The said report is based on the survey they conducted which was participated by a total of 3,850 mobile phone users from different countries including the United States. It is mainly focused on how the pandemic has affected gaming, particularly the mobile segment.
Lewis Ward, an analyst from IDC, explained why they delved into this topic. He said, “During the pandemic, there was this big spike [in gaming]. We’ve seen it in mobile as well as console and PC games. It was across the board. We wanted to find out what the new normal would look like after the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror.”
Ward also talked about how the people who participated in their study responded to their question about how their gaming habits will change once the pandemic settles. He said, “We asked them, how do they think their habits will change once the pandemic has subsided, and with other questions, we got to about a quarter of their respondents indicated they would reduce how much time they spent playing mobile games.”
It was also showed that the increase in gameplay seems to correlate with the severity of the crisis in certain places. Based on the report, around 63 percent of the respondents located in hard-hit countries said that they have been spending more time in mobile gaming.
“Two of the clearest and most important signals we found in the survey results were that mobile gaming activity tended to increase more in the countries with the highest COVID-19 death rates and that gamers in these same countries expected a larger pullback in gaming once the pandemic has subsided compared to gamers in countries that have had low COVID-19 death rates,” Ward explained.
“This latter change, which should propagate globally in the next 12 to 24 months, will likely have important implications for game developers and publishers,” he added.
What Is Likely to Happen Once the Pandemic is Over?
The study also has a prediction as to what will happen when the pandemic is close to over which is most likely to be late next year or early 2023. What they are suggesting is that around 25 percent of the net increase on all mobile gaming activities that are lifted by the pandemic will dissipate.
Even before the pandemic began, mobile gaming has been steadily growing over the last few years. AS mobile devices become cheaper yet powerful, more people are simply starting to show interest in this activity. This is especially now that gaming companies know the potential of the mobile gaming sector.
