The rise of mobile gaming [Infographic]

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Mobile gaming is growing more popular than ever. In fact, by next year one in four people worldwide will be active mobile gamers, and consumer spending on mobile games will reach $90 billion. As engagement with mobile gaming increases by 10% each year, artificial intelligence will be crucial for game testing to get better games to the market, faster.

Artificial intelligence has many roles in mobile gaming. Within gameplay, artificial intelligence can learn a user’s strategy and adapt, making the gameplay more challenging over time.

On the development side, artificial intelligence can be used to extrapolate maps and levels based on developer designs, create graphics based on input from real-world images, give levels and worlds more detail, and eventually build entire games from scratch.

AI testing has the ability to cut the development time of gaming significantly. Whereas testing maps can take developers weeks or months, AI can run through an entire map in less than one hour. This not only improves testing time, but it also prevents games with glitches from being released.

Some examples of popular mobile and download-based games are Fortnite, Pokemon Go, and Clash of Clans. Fortnite was first released on iOS in March of 2018, and by December of that year it had garnered 83 million downloads and boasted a $64 million monthly revenue. Last year Clash of Clans became the #1 downloaded app in the App Store and boasted revenue of $1.54 million per day. Today, a quarter of all apps in the App Store are games, proving how quickly mobile gaming’s popularity is growing.

Even older and less popular games are generating millions of dollars in revenue each month. Mobile gaming is quickly becoming more popular than console gaming – 81% of digital gaming time is spent on mobile apps. Learn more about the future of mobile gaming below.

Image: PinkLion.AI

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• How to get tech for less this Christmas [Infographic]
• Are tech companies growing “too big to fail?” [Infographic]
• This infographic explains why the future of security is biometric
• Is your data private? This infographic shows you how to secure your mobile data