The second part of the article written following the results of the GDC 2012 conference by John Jordan, editor of the site pocketgamer.biz , about the main trends of the mobile industry this year.
You can read about the top ten trends here.
11. Too many platforms
Recently, Zynga launched its platform. Of course, GREE, DeNA, and many others will follow in her footsteps. At least those who will have enough funds and projects to implement it.
Each new platform is a headache for the developer, because if he wants to succeed (and which developer does not want this?), he must present his project on each of them. The problem is that every platform has its own rules for placement and promotion.
As a result, it turns out that the development of the project becomes a simple matter compared to its promotion.
So the developer should not dream that his life will change for the better yet.
12. Dragon and Bear
Chinese and Russian companies are increasing their presence in the mobile market. Moreover, the latter mainly focus on the market of North America and Europe.
13. BlackBerry has a chance of success
GDC 2012 was the first big gaming conference where RIM was taken quite seriously.
There were a lot of official conversations about the BB10 and PlayBook promotion strategy, as well as behind-the-scenes discussions of the platform between the developers themselves.
A representative of one major studio informally told PocketGamer that their studio is going to raise more money with BlackBerry this year than with Android.
There are sources for such optimism. After all, BlackBerry mainly distributes expensive high-quality projects (a segment that was destroyed by piracy on Android). In other words, it compensates for the number of users with high prices. With good technologies, a high–quality app store and a successful promotion system, everything can work out for the company.
14. Thunder in paradise named TinyStar Gems?
2011 was the heyday of studios engaged in mobile social games. Storm8, TinyCo, Pocket Gems, Funzio and CrowdStar have loudly declared themselves. Moreover, each of them received venture capital, which they immediately sent to the iOS market, acquiring tens of millions of users along the way.
But if some of these companies have gained a foothold in the market, like, for example, the already mentioned Pocket Gems, others have been ordered to live for a long time.
Partly, it was all about venture money, partly because companies squandered money too quickly, and the cost of attracting users grew too fast.
In addition, companies flooded the market with projects similar to each other. At the same time, many of them were not even able to master the technical basics of working in the mobile market, such as the simultaneous development and release of projects on iOS and Android.
The situation on the market was also heated up by the arrival of such social monsters as Zynga, GREE and DeNA: competition has grown noticeably, and with them the cost of specialists and the cost of the development itself.
In general, the authors of PocketGamer expect numerous mergers and acquisitions. It is unlikely to be about billions, but about hundreds of millions of dollars – for sure.
15. It’s about time
Since the big console companies were silent at GDC 2012, saving their press releases until E3, all attention was focused on the mobile industry. This won’t happen next year. Everyone will discuss the latest technologies, super-realistic graphics and the launch of new projects on next-generation consoles.
To be continued…A source: