3. Mobile Gaming
Fads in mobile gaming may be short lived as games like Words With Friends, Draw Something, and Tiny Tower go from the number-one spot in the app store to clutter on your smartphone faster than the release cycle for Angry Birds spinoffs, but the mobile platform and its casual gaming market is here to stay. With the proliferation and near market-saturation of smartphones, Apple, Motorola, Samsung, and everyone else in the mobile hardware industry did what Nintendo and Sony never could--got old people playing handheld video games. This past June, Apple revealed that over 400 million iOS devices had been sold worldwide since the operating systems release in 2007. 400 million--and thats before the iPhone 5 and newest generation of iPods were released. Around the same time, Google released similar sales figures for its Android platform, which was released in 2008. That means there have been close to one billion smartphones, personal media devices, and tablets sold worldwide--a vast majority of which can play games. By comparison, the total sales for every model of Game Boy combined is just shy of 120 million units over the product lines thirteen year lifespan, while the most popular gaming-specific handheld ever, the Nintendo DS (including the DSi, DS Lite, 3DS, etc.) has moved 150 million units. And poof! Suddenly, people who would never buy a gaming handheld have a huge library of games at their fingertips that are easy to learn, addictive, and only cost a few bucks, if anything. Put those factors in a world of commutes, long lines, and impatient children, and you get sales phenomenons like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Fruit Ninja making piles of money that dwarf even the biggest video game releases. Sure, games like Doodle Jump and Tiny Wings are made to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but in doing so, they bring in a pretty penny for developers and publishers.