But it will never be more than that.
1. Game ops is too entrenched in mobile. The entire stack (user acquisition, analytics, monetisation) is tried and tested on mobile. These are difficult problems that seem easy to port to web games, but “devils in the detail”. Eg When you’re waiting on appsflyer to ship an update to properly attribute reinstalls for 6 months and end up wasting 25% of your UA budget during that time.
2. Consumers don’t want web games. The UI just isn’t there yet. You misclick out of a tab and lose progress or get distracted / start browsing another tab. Also to do with the ephemeral nature of a browser tab.
3. Unity’s dev network effects are too large. People who know how to make games use unity. People who want to make games therefore learn unity. It’s a flywheel.
4. Something psychological about downloading an app and seeing it on your Home Screen leads to retention.
Source: 7 years game dev and each studio I’ve worked in has been paid multiple tens of thousand dollars to port a game to web. Metrics were never anywhere near as good.