Honestly the reality is mobile games just developed a horrendous development culture and incentive base.
What I find kind of baffling is why did mobile gaming manage to effectively kill pocket sized gaming systems. IE I’m seeing the positive sign of the semi-portable systems. IE Switch and steamdeck…
But the gameboys and PSPs were basically killed by mobile phones. But they offered, basically quality games… yes 4+ generations behind existing PCs and consoles. But fun complete games that were worth $20-$50 to drop, and actually get many hours of fun out of.
There really were some great ones. Playing through Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops still stands out to me over a decade on. Shit was tight, and I honestly didn’t feel that again after the PSP. Until I picked up my steam deck, that thing would have rendered 10 year old me catatonic.
and that’s a thing to me, IMO I don’t think that there wasn’t potential to make good mobile phone games… or say for developers of phone games to default to allowing a standard clip controller etc…
But even with the basic limitations of a phone as a controller, it’s worth noting that the real fall of mobile gaming was just the rise of the shitty, microtransaction to progress games. That can be seen with the trajectory of even games that were origionally well loved mobile games, hopping on that bandwaggon (IE angry birds, plants vs zombies etc…)
Honestly the reality is mobile games just developed a horrendous development culture and incentive base.
What I find kind of baffling is why did mobile gaming manage to effectively kill pocket sized gaming systems. IE I’m seeing the positive sign of the semi-portable systems. IE Switch and steamdeck…
But the gameboys and PSPs were basically killed by mobile phones. But they offered, basically quality games… yes 4+ generations behind existing PCs and consoles. But fun complete games that were worth $20-$50 to drop, and actually get many hours of fun out of.
There really were some great ones. Playing through Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops still stands out to me over a decade on. Shit was tight, and I honestly didn’t feel that again after the PSP. Until I picked up my steam deck, that thing would have rendered 10 year old me catatonic.
and that’s a thing to me, IMO I don’t think that there wasn’t potential to make good mobile phone games… or say for developers of phone games to default to allowing a standard clip controller etc…
But even with the basic limitations of a phone as a controller, it’s worth noting that the real fall of mobile gaming was just the rise of the shitty, microtransaction to progress games. That can be seen with the trajectory of even games that were origionally well loved mobile games, hopping on that bandwaggon (IE angry birds, plants vs zombies etc…)