According to Flurry Analytics, smartphones are continuing their march to dominance in the video gaming sector. The company released a set of data accompanied by two year-on-year graphs that show the total revenue of the video game industry (console vs portable vs iOS/Android) and a more specific breakdown of portable game revenue (Nintendo DS vs PSP, iOS/Android.) As you might guess, smartphones are accounting for an ever larger share of the market.
The graphs are compelling, but as with almost all other surveys of this ilk, the whole thing comes with a gigantic asterisk. They casually note within the text of the press release that the data on the first graph (above) does not include PC game sales at retail or on digital download services. This is obviously a ridiculously huge omission considering World of Warcraft alone makes hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Not to mention the runaway success of services like Steam and Impulse.
That said, the graphs never included PC sales in previous years either. So the growth of smartphone gaming is still represented accurately, even if the total 8% share of the industry is likely completely false thanks to the billion dollar omission of PC gaming. Love them or hate them, those PC gamers spend a ton of money.
Another unrelated-yet-interesting tidbit from the study indicates that 40% of all smartphone application sessions are video games.
