The United States was the largest mobile gaming country on the planet in April 2017, accounting for one-fifth of all global gaming sessions and 13 percent of gaming-related app spells during the same period, according to the latest market study conducted by Flurry Analytics. While mobile games continue to be a popular pastime of consumers in the U.S., India, China, and a number of other countries, the hobby as a whole is on the decline for the second consecutive year, the report states. The San Francisco, California-based firm found that arcade and casual games on smartphones and tablets are losing their appeal among consumers and are consequently leading to a significantly lower number of mobile gaming sessions around the world, being the two largest growth engines driving this segment.
While a number of other genres including strategy, racing, and sports games have been on the rise in the last 12 months, their overall popularity still isn’t significant enough to compensate for the most popular mobile gaming categories dropping out of favor with consumers, the study revealed, adding that the loss in arcade, casual, and role-playing gaming sessions didn’t lead to a rise in popularity of any other type of smartphone and tablet games. According to the latest data, it seems that mobile gamers aren’t transitioning to other genres but are simply losing interest in the hobby as a whole. Regardless of that negative trend, gaming sessions became somewhat longer on average in the last year, the report suggests, highlighting a significant correlation between screen size and session length; spells on large tablets lasted over ten minutes on average, while those on medium-sized smartphones barely surpassed six minutes, Flurry Analytics discovered.
The data suggest that while mobile gamers may be losing some interest in this activity, they are becoming more immersed in particular titles and are therefore unlikely to completely stop playing games on their smartphones and tablets in the future. Even if the sessions are fewer in numbers, they’re leading to more engaged players, and such users are often a desirable audience for marketers, Flurry Analytics pointed out, adding how developers still have a lot of opportunities to monetize their creations.
