News JVTech For 15 years, Apple has been quietly crushing the global video game market. PCs are way behind
Published on May 1, 2024 at 6:30 p.m
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When we think of video games, we immediately think of consoles and the PC, and yet it was Apple that created by far the most lucrative video game market 15 years ago, as this graphic proves.
Consoles and PC: They dominated video games… 20 years ago
When we think of video games, we immediately think of PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and consoles. We also think about the PC, but when we discuss the market situation, Too often we forget the impact of mobile gaming. We see people playing anywhere, whenever they want, without spending more because they do it directly from their smartphone, which they need anyway. To create wealth, very often we find numerous microtransactions that work very well.
Mobile games are often considered less noble among purists, where the lure of profit takes precedence over passion, and that is by no means entirely wrong. These applications use methods to maintain players' loyalty, encourage them to log in every day, and provide them with peak levels of dopamine, causing them to want to get more and participate in a game for hours, increasing the chances of to pass at the checkout.
After all, at the beginning of the decade we find ourselves in a video game market dominated by mobile devices, as shown by this graph that describes the development of sales in this sector over the last 50 years.
The numbers are breathtaking : $101 billion in mobile gaming revenue in 2022 Worldwide, this is more than twice what the PC market generates with its 45 billion. Consoles are limited to 30 billion and virtual reality (VR) is currently struggling to stand out from the crowd.
It all started with the release of the iPhone in 2007, which offered a much larger screen than anything else on the market, a single physical button and a multi-touch touchscreen. Then smartphones became more and more powerful, screens became larger and larger, a blessing when gaming. If we add the frame rate increasing to 120 Hz and compatibility with Bluetooth controllers, all the ingredients are there. With sales of $50 billion in 2022, half of the total, Apple and the App Store are the ones that stand to benefit the most.
Check out the iPhone 15 Pro on Amazon
The “really big games” are also coming to smartphones
Of course, consoles and PCs remain a reference with countless legendary and above all exclusive games, since they are reserved for machines powerful enough to run them. Playing on a TV or computer screen is convenient, just like playing with a keyboard/mouse is impossible on a smartphone; In short, I won't teach you a lesson, The more classic platforms always have great advantages.
However, Apple has already begun a transition that we cannot ignore: for the first time, games usually reserved for consoles and PCs are appearing on the iPhone. Such is the case with the performance of the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro, which now hosts Resident Evil Village and Assassin's Creed Mirage. This is not about shortened versions that are graphically less convincing or contain fewer characters on the screen. It's the same identical game.
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