When gamers want to draw an image of what’s wrong with the mobile game industry, they often put a nice, round whale in the middle. For most, these ‘whales’ are gamers who get hooked on F2P games and spend so much money a month that they have made developers like Supercell richer than many small countries. And, of course, whales aren’t ‘real’ gamers, right? Well, a new study by global market research company Newzoo has some very interesting numbers that should really change the way we see mobile ‘big spenders’ as well as mobile gaming more generally. While I’m sure many of you have already jumped to the comments section to start typing away your opinions, I’m sure the rest who are still reading will find these numbers very interesting.
According to the study, there are 49.3 million big spenders on mobile, or about 2.8% of all mobile gamers. The US boasts the highest percentage of these mobile gamers with 4.8%. The most fascinating fact of the study is that these big spenders aren’t just playing and spending on mobile; they are in fact also spending a lot on ‘hardcore’ console and PC games, which forces us to rethink the way we talk about modern gaming habits and platforms of choice.
More specifically, the Newzoo study shows that those who spend big on mobile are the core gamer demographics we see on other, more traditional platforms. Globally, 67% of mobile big spenders are male with the majority between 21-35 years old. These big spenders spend big not only on mobile; 71% of them also spends big on console and 69% spends big on PC. In contrast, from the average mobile gamers only 11% spend big on console and only 8% on PC. Newzoo brings the example of Bethesda as a company that has realized this overlap and proceeded to develop Fallout Shelter for mobile before releasing Fallout 4; this move helped both games make loads of money. For Newzoo, Bethesda’s strategy and the subsequent results show that the gap between console and mobile gaming is not as big as it seems and might even not exist at all.
Why is this study interesting for mobile gamers? Well, for one it shows that all the turf wars over which gaming platform is better or which platform is for ‘real’ games and which for ‘casual gamers’ are actually pretty much a waste of time. When you have players who spend many hours and a lot of money on both Clash of Clans and Destiny (as the study shows), it’s very hard to argue that mobile gaming is for ‘those’ gamers who are nothing like the hardcore console and PC gamers. If, as the study shows, the boundaries between the various gaming platforms are almost non-existent, then I think it’s about time we stop talking about mobile games and mobile gamers as if they live on a separate, isolated planet made up of casual, F2P cash-grabs. Apparently, mobile, PC, and console gamers should all just be called gamers. If you want to read the whole study, go here.
