> It's much larger in Asia, which is an even bigger gaming market.
Is it because Asian consumers have a lower disposable income and cannot afford gaming consoles and gaming PCs as much?
Is it because Asian consumers have a lower disposable income and cannot afford gaming consoles and gaming PCs as much?
For the wealthier East Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea this isn't the case. It's more of a cultural thing due to various factors including
- Smartphones and mobile games became popular long before they became popular in the US. People are used to paying money for mobile games. It was this way from the very start.
- The Gacha model was popular in Japan even before mobile games. That's where the word comes from. Korea had similar machines.
- People take public transportation much more than in the US, which leads itself to playing games on the go (mobile).
- At least in Japan (less so in China and even less so in Korea), people prefer non-competitive gaming. That's why competitive games like DoTA, LoL, Counter Strike, etc, were never popular in Japan. Even Diablo with PVP never was popular.
Consoles and gaming PCs tend to be expensive (in terms of upfront costs), require more physical space to use, and are hard to move.
Mobile phones have multiple purposes and, crucially, are mobile (shocker, right?)
This means that if you could only have 1 electronic device, you'd 100% choose a mobile phone.
And what better way to find a lot of customers than a F2P mobile game? It has 0 barrier to entry, a large audience, relatively low development costs, and little actual "game design" expectations.