Four leading mobile game developers divulge their thoughts on the rise of mobile gaming, the iOS vs. Android vs. WP7 industry face-off, the impact of HD tablets like the iPad 3, and whether mobile gaming is now challenging the dominance of game consoles.
How did we get—here? It might have been difficult to predict the sudden popularity of smartphones and tablets five years ago. Today, however, they're snatching all of the headlines, generating buzz for the cool things they can do in increasingly convenient form factors. Can we expect these diminutive devices to displace our PCs any time soon? Most enthusiasts insist not, but it'd be hard to ignore the fantastic sales and consequent growth of smartphones and tablets.
Indeed, for a great many tasks, PCs still reign supreme. But recent embedded processor and graphics advancements are at least blurring the performance line that previously separated tablets and notebooks. Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 and Qualcomm’s fourth-generation Snapdragon are two mobile "super-processors" that emerged over the last year. And with Microsoft’s recent announcement that Windows 8 would support the ARM instruction set, the wheels of change are unquestionably in motion.
With change comes new surprises to look forward to. More muscular smartphone and tablet hardware is enabling software developers to write more demanding (and visually appealing) games. The results suggest that dedicated gaming handhelds could eventually be replaced by more general-purpose mobile devices—and challenge the market dominance of console games.
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