A study of market research in the past few years now confirms that the handheld gaming market has heavily migrated to Android and iOS products, as game sales for Android and iOS devices now attract far more revenue than physical game-in-a-box units sold for Sony PSP and Nintendo DS devices.
Gaming market analyst Flurry predicts that mobile and tablet games will dominate a 58 per cent slice of the handheld games market and generate a gross of $1.9 billion in the final days of 2011, while at the same time the combined total of both Sony and Nintendo sales is likely to amount to a lesser $1.4 billion.
If the information revealed by the analyst is a correct forecast of the handheld market, it will mark a drastic platform switch and the first year in history that Apple and Android games have generated markedly more revenue than traditional game manufacturers of the handheld gaming industry.
The market in 2009 showed just a 19 per cent slice being claimed by Apple and Google, with Nintendo’s DS range commanding a whole 70 per cent, while the PSP, experiencing past and future sales issues at the time, only had an 11 per cent share.
Recent industrial, financial and consumer trending issues have brought hard times for older manufacturers Sony and Nintendo, with the PSP and PSP GO virtually abandoned by parents Sony, whilst Nintendo’s stereoscopic 3D handheld the 3Ds received poor sales and low interest by consumers.
‘Recession shopping’ tactics have also contributed to the troubles for both companies, as the idea of combining phone and game platform has been highly appealing across the board for Android users, as well as the versatility of Apple products being attractive to Apple users. This shift to cheaper app-based mobile gaming as well as technological advancement in smartphones and tablets has obviously had something to do with Nintendo and Sony’s worries.
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