Anyone who owned an Xbox 360 console throughout its decade-long run is familiar with the RROD, the Red Ring of Death. It was the catch-all indication that something had gone catastrophically wrong inside the plastic chassis, and more often than not, it meant the powerful gaming console had become nothing more than an inert brick.
Last week, Microsoft gave the Xbox 360 the worst RROD of all; it announced that the last console to be manufactured had rolled off the production line.
The 360 wasn’t the console that put Microsoft on the map of the gaming world — the original Xbox, along with some critically popular games, wins that honor — but it did solidify the PC company’s reputation with the notoriously fickle gaming community. Rumors abound over the next iteration of Microsoft’s gaming business, but the ritual euthanasia of the 360 seems an appropriate moment to reflect on whether consoles or PCs offer the company the best way forward.
Easy answer: Neither, because mobile is officially the new king of the gaming.
PC and console diehards might quibble over the definition of smartphone-based Candy Crush and farming sims as true “games” but the numbers don’t seem to care. Newzoo’s most recent Global Games Market Report calculated that for the first time in history, revenue derived from mobile gaming is expected to outpace that from all other mediums — consoles, PC, handheld systems and browser-based games — with $36.9 billion, or 27 percent, by the end of 2016. Mobile gaming doesn’t appear to be looking back, either, as its share of the market will only increase with $42.5 billion (30 percent) in 2017, $47.4 billion (32 percent) in 2018 and $52.5 billion (34 percent) in 2019.
It’s clear that money is flowing from nearly every other segment of the gaming market straight to mobile, but it’s not just the revenue growth of the platform that should grab the attention of retailers trying to do the same to their mobile-bound consumers – it’s how those mobile gamers react to ads they all too easily ignore and even come to actively despise almost everywhere else.
The insight comes from a Unity Technologies report that looked at gamers’ openness to viewing a variety of ads – intermittent fullscreen pictures, omnipresent banners, half- or quarter-screen videos and fullscreen videos that deliver in-game rewards upon completion. Each ad obviously affects the experience of playing games in their own way, but it’s worth nothing that only the last category gives anything back to players outside of increased awareness of the next thing they should buy.
And, according to Unity, mobile gamers are all too aware of this quid pro quo arrangement – 46 percent of players prefer rewarded videos to any other ad type, and only 22 percent of them said that they would never watch such an ad under any circumstance. On the flip side, 18 percent indicated that they were always willing to take a break from flinging Angry Birds at presumably angrier targets if they knew something was in it for them at the end.
It should be a staggering realization for mobile retailers struggling to find captive audiences on their own sites or on their preferred social media platforms. That almost one in five mobile users are ready to pause their games at the drop of an advertiser’s hat – given, of course, the promise of a carrot at the end of a stick – might necessitate a shift in mobile marketing perspectives, as well as those in the reward and loyalty segments. Especially considering just how reviled ad blockers are among sites that essentially thrive of ad revenue, and the near-universal ambivalence the mobile consumer has for the financial straits ad blockers are forcing many online-only outlets toward, rewarded videos that deliver messages retailers want consumers to hear and perks (be they in-game power-ups or discounts to be used later) that those consumers view worth waiting for – yes, rewarded videos just might be a way forward for the growing mobile retail world.
After all, the mobile gaming world – and its take on advertising – is growing faster than ever.
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