Gaming as a whole is eyeing up all things mobile, the changing audience who has welcomed a brand-new demographic means that different gaming genres have started to grow in popularity – the latest hits have been in categories like online casinos as more options here have become amongst the most successful games on mobile for the more casual focussed, but there is yet to be a genre aimed at the more dedicated players looking to sink more time. This did once exist in the MMORPG market, well known for swallowing up large periods of time but something that has also been in decline over the past decade as the biggest games in the MMO space have shrunk and been replaced by different titles.
MMORPG’s in some form do already exist on the mobile market but aren’t all that big, but there have been games that have shown that a bigger approach to gaming can be successful – Genshin Impact is a great example of an RPG focussed game that is extremely well polished and offers cross-play options between PC and mobile, and in some sense has been the reason for the success of the game, and has shown that big RPG titles can fare very well when done properly – of course there are networking considerations that could make this approach more difficult but time has shown mobile could in fact be the perfect platform.
Another big game that has made the jump successful is Albion Online, having been around for a number of years and an established name in the space it has been one to make the mobile jump and done so very well – if other publishers can replicate the same approach, it will provide a new home for the genre which has been struggling on PC with only a few games really standing out with big figures.
The final thing that allows this approach to be a new home is within microtransactions, they’ve become so commonplace in mobile gaming that players won’t be surprised by their introduction and have become such an important business model that they’re already present in bigger MMORPGs but disliked amongst many of the users that play these titles, and so the transition here wouldn’t be a stretch to make either.
Currently the only barrier is within performance, mobile devices aren’t particularly well armed to deliver bigger games like this in a perfect way but they are catching up and games offering better fidelity and all that would be required for these games to succeed – mobile could be the new home for MMORPGs and replace the PC market which only holds a few big games currently but all slowing down in terms of new and returning users.
(Image from destructoid.com)
