Thought this was a cool infographic. Poor arcades.
The Rise of Gaming Revenue Visualized
- Thread starter nesjess
- Start date
Arcades don't even register. How depressing.
TheYeti
Well-known member
This image is truly fascinating. I honestly had no idea that mobile gaming is worth more than PC and console combined.
ElectricDreamz
Well-known member
>mobile
OP
OP
I'm not into mobile games myself because IAPs annoy me, but I can see why it's so lucrative.
Almost everyone has a smartphone so no needing to sell a console or any other type of hardware. Hundreds of games out there that are "free-to-play" or a few bucks. Millions of people all playing these games who get addicted and spend even more money on in-app purchases/subscriptions.
Then, you have companies like Epic Games that have Fortnite on Mobile/PC/Console, all cross-play and raking in from all the pots. As a private company, they were valued at $17.3B back in August after receiving another $250M investment from Sony.
Almost everyone has a smartphone so no needing to sell a console or any other type of hardware. Hundreds of games out there that are "free-to-play" or a few bucks. Millions of people all playing these games who get addicted and spend even more money on in-app purchases/subscriptions.
Then, you have companies like Epic Games that have Fortnite on Mobile/PC/Console, all cross-play and raking in from all the pots. As a private company, they were valued at $17.3B back in August after receiving another $250M investment from Sony.
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MasterFygar
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I'm pretty exclusively an arcade/VR guy. I can see I backed the winning horses. 
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Wow. That was eye opening!
I appreciate your sharing it - it provides some insights into what drove the downfall of arcades.
When I was a kid, we got the Atari 2600, and a bunch of cartridges. They were never as good as the arcade games themselves.
But then came Nintendo (Now you're Playing with POWER) and the game changed.
Atari reacted slowly with a couple of products, and lost a market that they had owned for years.
It's the same story. Remember:
Delphi
Compu$erve
Genie?
Then AOL came and BAM - within a few years, they were all gone.
GENIE was the most advanced - I remember asking my product VP when CI$ was going to get multi-player games like Air Warrior, and she said "We have Space Wars."
You remember Space Wars? The game where if you had a fast modem, you could wait in a "star cloud" and then hammer the crap out of an opponent before they could figure out where you were? And the graphics? Your ship was a single character. Not like Air Warriors, where you could fly a P51 Mustang, with a photo replica of the cockpit in front of you.
Then again, the people who had been on longer would wait above the airports, and shoot newbies out of the sky as soon as their wheels left the ground unless they took evasive actions, so Air Warriors wasn't great, but it was light years ahead of anything Compu$erve ever had.
That kind of corporate short-sightedness (we have a commanding market share - so we're fine) kills more good companies.
I appreciate your sharing it - it provides some insights into what drove the downfall of arcades.
When I was a kid, we got the Atari 2600, and a bunch of cartridges. They were never as good as the arcade games themselves.
But then came Nintendo (Now you're Playing with POWER) and the game changed.
Atari reacted slowly with a couple of products, and lost a market that they had owned for years.
It's the same story. Remember:
Delphi
Compu$erve
Genie?
Then AOL came and BAM - within a few years, they were all gone.
GENIE was the most advanced - I remember asking my product VP when CI$ was going to get multi-player games like Air Warrior, and she said "We have Space Wars."
You remember Space Wars? The game where if you had a fast modem, you could wait in a "star cloud" and then hammer the crap out of an opponent before they could figure out where you were? And the graphics? Your ship was a single character. Not like Air Warriors, where you could fly a P51 Mustang, with a photo replica of the cockpit in front of you.
Then again, the people who had been on longer would wait above the airports, and shoot newbies out of the sky as soon as their wheels left the ground unless they took evasive actions, so Air Warriors wasn't great, but it was light years ahead of anything Compu$erve ever had.
That kind of corporate short-sightedness (we have a commanding market share - so we're fine) kills more good companies.
andrewb
Well-known member
Mobile gaming is lucrative for the same reason Facebook is. It's manipulatively addictive. And it's designed to be that way. You can google it if you're interested, there's much written about the casino tricks and techniques, and the psychological tactics that mobile games employ.
These companies are like cigarette companies in the 50's. They make a product that they know is addictive, and they're using it to mine as much money from the public as they can. And they'll do it until people wake up to how bad it is, and/or the government steps in and regulates them.
We live in an addicted society.
These companies are like cigarette companies in the 50's. They make a product that they know is addictive, and they're using it to mine as much money from the public as they can. And they'll do it until people wake up to how bad it is, and/or the government steps in and regulates them.
We live in an addicted society.
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mecha
Well-known member
the current crop of teenagers/20-somethings don't know what arcades were. maybe they'll see barcades or free play arcades now, but they'll never know what they were like in their first run, because they didn't exist on the planet when they were a thing. they were also coming up when smartphones became a thing. I didn't get my first cell phone until I went to college... today there's 6 year olds with phones. I don't know how consoles survive, parents are giving kids like $800 iPads to play games. it's really gross to me. just a major cultural divide. I look up Genesis stuff on youtube and the kids are clamoring for mobile ports of games. who plays those on phones? GTA? really? well, I guess they are. more power to them.
Trackball
Well-known member
DLC is crazy. People be paying sick money for a skin!
mecha
Well-known member
everyone should just stop buying DLC. then the companies will stop this bullshit.
Onyx Jaguar
Well-known member
What's even worse is people buying for a chance for a skin, or buying what are essentially cheats. Games that do that usually suck anyway
ElectricDreamz
Well-known member
it gets worse.
indie titles aside, there are fewer and fewer companies involved in game development as well. Ubisofts and EAs (or whatever mass-media huge dev corp you want to invoke) either buy up the small devs or out-sell them and put them out of business. the titles we see are increasingly-commoditized solely for mass-appeal, and since billions of people own smart devices (or several, as tablet computing has been massively successful as well) the focus is on this casual (and lucrative for the developer and publisher) gaming market. the greater the focus on mobile, the less on other gaming platforms
and the titles that make it to PC and consoles must pass through corporate filters (case studies, demographics, market data, economic projections) as well. games are no longer about a challenge or fun, they rarely tell an interesting story or give the player a unique perspective and experience ... they're just another sales portal for companies already selling all of us a ton of shit as it is.
i have to wonder what the classic era(s) of arcade gaming would look like if they began under our modern media landscape
indie titles aside, there are fewer and fewer companies involved in game development as well. Ubisofts and EAs (or whatever mass-media huge dev corp you want to invoke) either buy up the small devs or out-sell them and put them out of business. the titles we see are increasingly-commoditized solely for mass-appeal, and since billions of people own smart devices (or several, as tablet computing has been massively successful as well) the focus is on this casual (and lucrative for the developer and publisher) gaming market. the greater the focus on mobile, the less on other gaming platforms
and the titles that make it to PC and consoles must pass through corporate filters (case studies, demographics, market data, economic projections) as well. games are no longer about a challenge or fun, they rarely tell an interesting story or give the player a unique perspective and experience ... they're just another sales portal for companies already selling all of us a ton of shit as it is.
i have to wonder what the classic era(s) of arcade gaming would look like if they began under our modern media landscape
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Yes I see that arcade gaming when it was actually a thing(counting the height of the Arcade golden years) even without adjusting for inflation beats console gaming of today.....now adjust that for inflation.....39 billion in 1983 dollars is almost 100 billion today. No self-respecting gamer gives a shit about mobile gaming.
Actually looking at those numbers, I'm surprised to see that console gaming has yet to overtake Arcade games in revenue at their highest levels....and when you adjust for inflation......I don't think consoles ever will come close to those numbers
Actually looking at those numbers, I'm surprised to see that console gaming has yet to overtake Arcade games in revenue at their highest levels....and when you adjust for inflation......I don't think consoles ever will come close to those numbers
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OP
OP
Yeah, it would be cool if they had put numbers to account for inflation. This chart would look very different.
Trackball
Well-known member
They missed a 1978 quarter I found while deep cleaning one of my cabinets the other day. With a 216% inflation adjustment that was $0.79.
