Fred "HeinKill" Williams interviews Iain McNeil, Development Director and JD McNeil, Chairman of the Slitherine Group. Fred also provides his 2012 personal favorites in mobile gaming.

http://simhq.com/_mobile/mobile_007a.html

No Strike Fighters Android? Smaller than X Plane, but also cheaper.



The Jedi Master

Great article, I agree... Real Racing 3 comes out Tuesday, RR2 is awesome and on sale.

And even the classics, stratego, risk, battleship are cool.... What I want is the old axis and allies game on iPad.


Also Battle of the bulge and pacific fleet are both very good... And need for speed. Best sport game is FIFA 2013... Wish for more sport games.

Great Job Heinkill !

Sincerely Desode

OMG how could they not mention......

Just this one from Battlefront. Haven't tried it but CM is one of the best war games ever. It's short by all accounts but certainly a good first attempt. The developers are obviously planning ahead. They have too.

Combat Mission Touch

Gillers

Oh, here we go again! First it was the console games that were killing the PC games and now it's the Mobile Gaming that is killing the PC games (and according to the title, consoles games as well).
When do people realise that the BEST gaming platform is BY FAR the PC! Nothing beats a PC, nothing! I remember back in the 90's when consoles appeared and other gaming computers such as Atari also appeared that PC games were dead! Where they? Of course not.

Mark my words: In a few years from now the PC will again be considered by developers the best (top) gaming platform. And I say 'developers' because I never had any doubts about this!
What PC has (which makes it the "best") is a combination of features that no other platform has or will have in a conceivable future, such as large screens, much bigger processing power (CPU and GPU), much bigger RAM memory capability, etc... Oh and of course, they are easily updated, while in order to "update" other platforms you must purchase a new model!

With this I'm not saying that PC games will replace Mobile Gaming or even console games in the future. I think that every platform has its place on the market and IMO what Mobile Gaming does or will do is to replace other small mobile gaming platforms such as Gameboy (but never the PC)!

Funnily enough after I wrote this, the Sony PS4 release event was held.

On CNET the reviewer commented that 'The PC and mobile gaming are putting console gaming under such pressure it is doubtful this effort from Sony is enough'.

Nice article!

It's definitely a very interesting subject. I personally think that mobile games will never kill genres such as flight sims, where the physical controllers are crucial (joystick, pedals, trackIR...), but tablets and turn-based strategy games are a match made in heaven. You can definitely expect a lot more of those in the future.

On the other side it's true that it's going to distract many developers who might be just scratching a living on the PC and could potentially make a lot more money on mobile devices. Could this be the case for Thirdwire, with their Strike Fighters series? The level of depth of their flight sims seems perfect to guarantee a bright future on mobile and tablets.

Finally, regarding X-Plane, I would say Aerofly FS has already surpassed it in many ways and it's without doubt the new standard to match. X-plane actually looks surprisingly outdated compared to this...



Good read. And thanks for the article!

A very timely and interesting article.

Over at Thirdwire, TK has opened up on what's going on with PC vs mobile development so far as the Strike Fighter series is concerned.

Fascinating reading:-

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB3w/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9420&start=16

And this follow-on thread, also with much input from TK:-

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB3w/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9440

The long and short of it seems to be, that even for a small indie developer, who has stayed in the game of PC flight sim development for well over a decade, that PC flight sim dev costs are too high and returns too small. The various mobile platforms have a far wider potential audience, and even for casual arcade flight games, the microtransaction model brings in the money. Whether it brings in enough remains to be seen, but here's hoping. . .

Baltika. Very interesting reading. Thanks for the links!

Good news for TK is that his mobile games have only been released on Android so far. iOS is a far more profitable market (stats clearly show that iPhone users spend a lot more on apps than Android ones do), so things will only improve when the iPhone/iPad version comes out. I can't wait to try them out!

I don't think mobile gaming is killing anything.

PC-gaming is as strong as ever and with PS4 and other next-gen consoles, that market will be covered as well. People are spending more on games and gaming in general, so there are a place for all three systems.

But the media has to be dramatic and invent a conflict, so thats why PC-gaming has been declared dead the last 15 years, and now it's the consoles turn.

Lots of people use all three systems to entertain themselves, so there is no "war" between the platforms.

What we could need though, is some pruning of game-developers. There are just so many crap-games being made, so I for one would welcome some killing-off in that sector!

For me, thats the crux of it. There is a new competitor for the entertainment dollar...the mobile gaming platform. My dollar which used to be split between console and pc games, is now split between three platforms, not two. I dont have more money to spend, so the money I spend on each platform is going to be split into smaller pieces, which has several implications. (The death of any one gentre, pc gaming, or console gaming, is not one of them.)

+ if you are a developer who doesnt cover one of those platforms, you risk losing out on potential revenue. if you develop for pc or console only, you are developing for a market which as time progresses may have a shrinking market share of the total gaming market. you can still have a big success, but in a shrinking market it will get harder.
+ if you want to maximise your revenue potential you could develop your titles across two or even all three platforms, which has significant extra development costs, so you have to balance capturing extra sales, against the extra development costs
+ game publishers are drawn by growth, so if the big growth is in mobile gaming, which seems to be the case, they will invest more of their publishing dollars there, and less in the other platforms. this could see fewer pc titles, fewer console titles, more mobile titles. you will still have plenty of gaming goodness on which to spend your gaming dollar, but if you are passionate about a particular platform like the PC or console, you might find there are fewer options.

Another thing that occurs to me is that mobile gaming, by nature, is better placed to take advantage of digital game distribution and impulse purchases. In the past, we used to go to game stores, and buy our games in DVD ROM format. Can't remember the last time I did that! So in the scenario where purchases are happening online, mobile game apps are much better placed being smaller in scope and scale, quicker to download, almost instant in download and play satisfaction. Even the bigger mobile gaming titles only take a few minutes to pull down over wifi or 3G or 4G. So, you read a game review on iphone on the bus, go to the app store, download the app and you have played the first few levels before your bus trip is even over. Compared to reading a review about a PC or console game, waiting until you get home, maybe changing your mind, the inconvenience of a long download and install process...all these things are barriers to the purchase which mobile gaming doesnt have.

And there will always be a segment for whom none of those things are a barrier...people who love the depth and longevity of a good PC title and for whom the longer download and setup and tweaking of peripherals and settings and options is all part of the price of a great game experience. Just as there are still people who love going to a physical music shop, or bookshop, and thumbing through the LP racks or bookshelves...and always will be.

I can't help thinking though, looking at other aspects of the entertainment industry, from music, to books, to movies, that the future is going to be streamed, mobile and instant gratification, and that goes for gaming too.

Nice article - and you even got in a Battle for Wesnoth mention! One of my favorites in recent years.

Has mobile gaming eaten into sales of PC games? No doubt it has. Will it "kill" PC gaming to the extent that no more PC games will be made? Nope. Simulations and even first person shooters will always play better on a PC than on a tablet or smartphone. I would suspect that mobile gaming has eaten more into the sales of console games due to the more simplistic nature of console games compared to PC games.