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The world of gaming was traditionally divided between two camps: PC and console. However, recently we have seen that mobile gaming is quickly rising in both popularity and quality. While consoles have been the king of convenience and comfort, mobile gaming puts that on an even higher level. But can mobile gaming rival the quality consoles offer? Read on to hear our thoughts.
Quick and Easy Access
There are some fields in which mobile gaming is overwhelmingly above other competitors. It’s not just the previously mentioned convenience of having your games within arms reach basically 24/7, although that too is a huge plus. Additionally, there are some genres and game styles which mobile gaming offers that are just not sufficiently developed nor popular on any of the major consoles. Fans of casual and puzzle games know this very well as the best titles out there are developed for iOS and Android first. It’s easy to understand that if you’re looking to catch a quick gaming session between two tasks, or while commuting you’ll have to be able to do it through a mobile app.
Availability of iGaming Options
If you are into iGaming there’s no better platform to enjoy this popular pastime than your phone. All the top payout online casinos are primarily focused on mobile users so that’s where all the fun is. With online gambling games the commitment to safety, secure encryption of data, and payment methods is something that’s just more easily kept in top shape on phones. So if you’re looking for a wide selection of games, good bonuses, and quick payouts, you’ll play on your phone. Console players, unfortunately, don’t have a lot of options to enjoy casino games.
The Future is Streaming
Even with PC and mainstream consoles, we have an uptick in the ways publishers are using streaming, whether it’s on their handheld accessories or cloud gaming on the main machine. With the availability of phones as powerful as computers, streaming games basically became an afterthought. Both NVIDIA’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming version of Game Pass are now streamable on phones – allowing you to enjoy console games on top of titles only available for phones. Sony is not nearly on the same level with their somewhat messy game catalog included in the PlayStation Plus subscription model. We’re still waiting to see if they aim to further improve their streaming option which is currently somewhat limited.
Graphical Fidelity
For quite a long time mobile gaming could not possibly compare to the visuals that gaming consoles could accomplish. The problem was that it was not easy to pack powerful hardware in a compact machine such as a smartphone. Of course, consoles are still not superior to what a powerful PC can perform graphically, but the matter of price is still a massive gap, even with huge discounts on PC components.
However, in recent years we can see more and more high-budget mobile games that are up to par with their console counterparts. What’s more, there is a growing number of mobile ports of console and PC games that are working just as well on phones as they are on their original platforms.
Advanced Processing Power
Long gone are the days in which mobile gaming was suffocated by weak hardware. Detailed visuals are now easily achieved through processors with massive power. iPhones use A-Series chips from Apple, while many stronger Android phones are equipped with laptop-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. Combine those with some really punchy GPUs and you’ll get games with graphical options like RTX literally on your palm.
Augmented Reality
Everyone remembers the Pokemon Go craze a few years ago. The gaming-on-the-go concept that AR titles like that one gave us combined the mobility and portability of phones with features that are impossible to utilize on a console. With external accessories like visors, you can even get a cheap VR set using nothing but your phone. It’s very easy to see how this is another field where consoles will have a hard time catching up to innovations brought in by phone games.
Rise of Mobile eSports
Lately, we see more and more mobile eSports competitions happening. What was once a uniquely “hardcore” gaming thing is now becoming a mobile gaming category as well, and it’s catching fire. Titles like PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings, and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang are not only increasingly popular with the viewers, but also attracting big sponsors and offering incredible financial prizes with pools numbering in millions of dollars.
Twitch streamers playing mobile competitive games are consequently growing in numbers, which is expanding the ecosystem and bringing in more and more money. The quality of games might be currently shoulder to shoulder, but we are predicting an exponential rise in the popularity of mobile eSports in the next few years, which will surely dethrone some of the “old gods” like LoL and DotA – or at least shake their foundations significantly.
Developers Moving Focus to Mobile
With what we have listed so far, it will come as no surprise that even game developers are switching their focus to mobile platforms more. While AAA titles are not as significantly represented in the smartphone field yet, the indie world has been taking advantage of the easily accessible market. A single dev or a small team can build a high-quality game for Android or iPhone way faster than for a console.
The ease with which the technical part of the whole process is done is just one part of the equation. Publishing and promoting a game is also more streamlined and easy for independent authors. This in turn gave us some amazing titles like Monument Valley, Alto’s Adventure, Father and Son, and many other games with amazing artistic vision that might have never existed if consoles were the developers’ only option.
Reviewed and edited by Albert Fang.
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Article Title: How Mobile Gaming Is Rivalling Console Games In Quality
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