作者：Joost van Dreunen

我们总是很难去衡量手机游戏对于电子游戏产业的影响。

game market saturation(from develop-online)

首先，它改变了玩家的定义，为游戏带来更多样化的用户。也许我们更容易从收益上去描述它的影响，就像在2014年手机游戏的总收益为210亿美元，并且在明年年末将会达到280亿美元。这也让手机游戏成为了最大的游戏类别并且占据了750亿互动娱乐国际市场1/3的份额。

不出所料，围绕着手机游戏的主要讨论都是关于成功与类似成功的游戏所赚取的百万收益。最初，这里都是一些没有工作但却突然找到能够赚大钱的方法的设计师们。像iSteam和《俄罗斯方块》等早前的应用为越来越多人辞去全职工作并完全专注于手机游戏开发铺平了道路。

从那时起手机游戏市场便开始发生巨大的改变。在一些小型开发者获得成功后，像艺电，动视和Take-Two等大型发行商也进入了该市场。同时，这个全新平台也为一群社交游戏开发者提供了一个特殊的机会，即让King等公司能够创造属于自己的成功。所有这些巨头的加入也改变了这里的竞争环境：用户总是期待看到更高质量的游戏，而游戏的市场营销预算也不断增加。

到目前为止，消费者需求一直很稳定：一月份，英国的付费手机玩家平均消费18.25英镑，总共消费564万英镑。重要的是：在2013年和2014年年间，英国手机游戏市场增长了12%，即从4870万英镑增长到5460万英镑。

但也是从那时起我们开始看到消费者消费达到一个稳定的水平。更具体地说就是，人们在手机游戏上的平均消费低于手机游戏的制作成本。这很容易理解，因为可支配收入并非是无限的，手机游戏会为了得到关注和收益而与其它平台展开竞争，如全新的家庭主机以及其它娱乐形式。

这便引出了一个问题：手机游戏市场是否出现了饱和的迹象？

估计你的用户规模

经济学家使用了“市场饱和”去描述一种产品变得很普遍，即大多数可能购买该产品的人已经拥有了这件产品的情况。

当我们着眼于智能手机的出货量时，我们会发现两大平台，也就是Android和iOS都拥有良好的销售记录。但这主要是因为苹果提供了更加实惠的iPhone版本以及谷歌相对便宜的智能手机所创造的更大的市场份额所成就的。

紧接着，根据产业动向检测者Garnet，平板电脑的销量也从两位数降到了一位数。这也告诉了我们那些可能会购买手机游戏设备的人现在已经拥有了这些设备。

随着硬件达到饱和，我们必须意识到这些额外的消费者与早前的高消费者是不同的。既然手机游戏已经成为一种主流娱乐，我们就不可能再期待这里出现超常的消费。

然而饱和也不是一种坏事。

实际上，这也预示着市场条件的改变。作为回应，手机游戏公司将变得更具有创造性并花费更多资金去获取用户。既然新鲜感已经不适合许多消费者，那么这里便会开始展开真正的竞争。

这个领域的领头军们已经在此增加了赌注，就像Supercell和Machine Zone投入了大量的资金于SuperBowl广告中并请来了一些超级名模。而缺少预算的公司则会致力于寻找更小众的用户并尝试着创造一个立基用户群体。

最后，为了紧跟市场势头，许多手机发行商将目标转向了亚洲市场，特别是中国市场。但进入这一市场也决非易事。我们需要考虑：现在，世界上最大的发行商之一，即动视在中国发行了最大也是受欢迎的一款游戏，《使命召唤》，但是如果没有中国最大发行商腾讯的帮助，它便不可能取得这样的成绩。甚至连最厉害的公司也不能只是闷头闯进来。

既然手机游戏市场不断饱和或者说开始呈现饱和迹象，那么这里所具有的风险也会不断增加。随着竞争的不断激烈以及预算的增加，手机游戏开发者所面临的真正问题将会是：是什么让你觉得自己有可能获得成功？你的回答应该是：让我来找出这个答案！

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Understanding mobile games market saturation

By Joost van Dreunen

It’s very difficult to measure the exact impact mobile gaming has had on the video games industry.

For one, it has changed the notion of what a gamer is – if that’s even a thing anymore – by making the audience for games more diverse than ever. It is perhaps a bit easier to express its impact in terms of revenue, as mobile gaming totalled around $21bn in 2014 and is well on its way to reach $28bn by the end of next year. This makes it the largest games category and accounts for roughly a third of the $75bn worldwide market for interactive entertainment.

Unsurprisingly, the dominant narrative surrounding mobile games has focused largely on the ridiculous millions that successful and quasi-successful titles have earned. Initially, it was the ragtag generation of unemployed designers who suddenly found themselves printing money. Early apps like iSteam and Trism provided the evidence necessary for a growing number of people to quit their day jobs and focus exclusively on mobile game development.

Since then, the mobile games market has changed dramatically. Following the success of small devs, larger publishers like EA, Activision and Take-Two entered the market. At the same time, this new platform presented a unique opportunity for a host of social games developers, allowing a company like King to build on its experience and success. The entry of all these big players has changed the competitive environment: audiences expect higher quality games and marketing budgets have started to balloon.

So far, consumer demand has been healthy: in January the average paying mobile gamer in the UK spent ￡18.25 for a total of ￡56.4m. Now here’s the important part: Between 2013 and 2014, the mobile games market in the UK grew around 12 per cent, from ￡487m to ￡546m.

But since then we have seen early signs of consumer spending reaching a plateau. More specifically, the average amount that people spend on mobile games is falling behind on the cost of production. This makes sense, since disposable income is not infinite and mobile games compete for attention and wallet share with other platforms, such as the new home consoles and various other forms of entertainment.

This raises the question: is the mobile games market showing signs of saturation?

SIZING UP YOUR AUDIENCE

Economists use the term ‘market saturation’ to describe a situation in which a product has become so common that most people who will buy it already have.

When looking at smartphone shipments, we see that the two major platforms – Android and iOS – are having record sales in terms of volume. But this is largely the result of Apple offering a more affordable version of the iPhone and the growing market share of Google’s relatively cheap smartphone offerings.

In tandem, the sales of tablets have dropped from double digits year-over-year to a single digit forecast by industry watcher Garnet. This tells us that the bulk of people who would buy a mobile gaming device already has by now.

With hardware reaching saturation, it is important to note that these additional consumers are not the same as the high-spending early adopters from before. Now that mobile gaming has become a mainstream pastime, it is unreasonable to expect above-average spending.

Saturation, however, is not a bad thing.

In fact, it indicates a change in market conditions. In response, mobile game firms will have to become more creative and spend more capital on building audiences. Now that the novelty has worn off for a lot of consumers, real competition begins.

Already the leaders in the space have raised the stakes with Supercell and Machine Zone spending big bucks on supermodels and SuperBowl ads. Companies that lack such budgets will, instead, look for more specific audiences and try to carve out a particular niche.

Finally, to stay with the market momentum a lot of mobile publishers have moved operations to Asia and, specifically, China. But entering this market is so easy. Consider this: currently one of the world’s biggest publishers (Activision) is releasing one of the largest and most popular franchises (Call of Duty) in China, but it can’t do so without the help of China’s biggest distributor, Tencent. Even the big boys can’t just roll in and claim market share.

Now that the mobile games market is maturing and starting to show signs of saturation, the stakes are raised. As competition intensifies and budgets balloon, the real question mobile devs confront is: what makes you think that you can be successful? The answer is and should be: let’s find out.（source：develop-online)