Mobile gaming taking over

Flurry , a US based mobile analytics company has released data demonstrating the increasing growth in iOS and Android gaming sales has come at the expense of Nintendo and Sony portable gaming systems.

The data used for the study is collected from US software revenue sourced both from the NPD Group (Consumer market Research) and from Flurry’s own research on 125,000 mobile apps over a period of three years since 2009.

In 2009 portable games software revenue was at $2.7 billion and is projected in 2011 to jump to an estimated $3.3 billion. Although this is a rise in revenue of 600 million dollars Nintendo and Sony revenue has been flagging over the same time period. Before being overtaken by Android and iOS platforms, Nintendo and Sony in 2009 generated $2.2 billion and in 2010 $1.6 billion in revenue. This year however, Flurry projects their revenue combined at $1.4 billion whilst iOS and Android will most likely pull in $1.9 billion. iOS and Android revenue represents a 58% share of US portable game software revenue whilst Nintendo and Sony only represent a 36% and 6% share respectively.

iOS and Android revenue has increased 39% in the portable games revenue share since 2009 whilst Nintendo has dropped 34% in the last two years and Sony dropping 5% over the same time period.

Source: Flurry Analytics website

So what is the reason for the demise of Sony and Nintendo’s portable games revenue and the prevalence of Android and iOS based games? Flurry acknowledges the titanic amount of freemium titles on mobile platforms coupled with widespread hardware adoption for the platforms as one the chief contributors. Additionally there is an abundance of $0.99 game titles for mobiles which when compared to the price for games on traditional devices is significantly cheaper. Another large advantage of iOS and Android is their accessibility to games. With these devices you can simply browse and download a game anywhere, anytime, whilst the DS still requires you to physically go to a store to buy its games. Coupled with this is the fact that far more people own Smart-phones than do a DS or PSP because the latter only really serve one purpose. This makes iOS and Android’s target audience much larger.

Some argue too that although the 3DS was only brought out earlier this year, that the DS and PSP consoles are nearly obsolete with newer consoles to replace them. When this happens many are predicting a spike in Sony and Nintendo’s revenue market share.

One thing is for sure however, that iOS and Android are here to stay, at least for the immediate future.