Noteworthy Advice for the Future Mobile Game Devs in 2023

One of the highest profit-generating industry of the current era is none other but mobile gaming. Past year, mobile games alone accumulated a total of $61.3 billion in revenue. It’s one of the reasons why Xbox Live is expanding to Android & iOS. Not only did it surpassed the revenue for PC gaming worth $35.7 billion but it also left the console gaming behind with net annual revenue of $12.7 billion.

It signifies that mobile gaming industry is currently at the boom of its era. Things for the mobile industry only seems to get much better and interesting as we move forward. We have seen the rise of Stadia, a gaming platform that can run the latest games on any screen and at any specifications. It has taken away the burden of spending budgets on upgrading PCs and purchasing the latest consoles. Moreover, mobile/cloud gaming is going to turn into a much lucrative factor in the near future with games like Fortnite and PUBG. And, the beyond is yet to come, the 5G internet service that will revolutionize the entire mobile gaming experience for the current era.

With such technologies entering the sphere of the mobility world, competitions across the planet are heating up for everyone, including the mobile gaming industry.

 

Why Mobile App Developers Need to Perform Rigorous Testing?

As competition is on the rise for the mobile gaming industry, the patience level of the modern day player diminishes. The modern day gamer simply abandons an app just in case if they experience a performance glitch during the gameplay. And while they are at there, customers also drop a poor review and bad ratings on your mobile app. Not only does it hurts the revenue stream for your business but it also sends your brand credibility at risk within the app market.

Just imagine if Ubisoft Entertainment launches a game and it is a total flop because of performance issues… People will think twice or thrice before investing their budgets again from something there.

Hence, gaming developers are expected to identify and improve performance glitches in gaming. When asked, many developers revealed that they perform rigorous pre-launch testing to fine-tune the app performance. They also take time to study and monitor the UX and identify potential problems.

Keeping their efforts in light, here are some noteworthy advice from the common day individual to help app developers make user engagement and experiences for customers much better.

 

1) Load Times Are a Fuss, Minimize It

Nobody likes to wait in a long queue to get served. Imagine you are hungry and you want to eat a burger but you have to stand in a long waiting queue for your chance to come by. It becomes irritating. Similarly, when customers interact with your mobile app, they expect a seamless experience. They don’t wish to spend long hours waiting in queue (which in our game app is the loading screen).

Nowadays, most games show that their download time is considerably less, but once the user downloads the game and start the application, they realize that there is an additional 800MB to 1GB of more data to be downloaded. Many RPG games are guilty of this practice. Hence, my advice to game developers is that they should fill up this gap by opting in for a complete upfront download instead.

 

2) Granular Data Leaves No Room for Quality Compromise

Gone are they days when game developers would easily lay the blame on carriers and platforms. We are now living in an era of artificial intelligence (AI) where automation can easily pinpoint all known and unknown issues which can have a direct impact on the game performance. With granular data, many positively groomed game developers can now stay way ahead of the competition.

Game developers are making use of the OpenAI initiative. Such initiatives are researches performed by academia and industry experts involving AI and ML. Such studies help current market developers to explore new areas of research and help them develop more smart and interactive mobile games. There are many games which are now integrated with smart bots that learn from the player’s performance in-game and then use what it has learned against the player itself. In a way, you feel like you are getting challenged by your own self every now and then while playing the game.

 

3) Don’t Allow Defragmentation ruin Gaming Experience

It was a massive turndown for iPhone X users when they learned that they can’t play Fortnite on their respective phones on 60 FPS. However, Fortnite developers weren’t satisfied with this reveal and they went all the way to release a 60 FPS version which was playable on the iPhone X. Although, it wasn’t something which wasn’t fixable, but still it revealed a potential issue. Hence, it is important that most modern-day mobile app developers should keep up with the rapidly advancing cellular technologies.

 

If your game involves high quality animations and detailed videography, then there is a strong chance that your video quality might suffer. To create a positive user experience for mobile gamers, FPS (frames per second) is an important factor which vary greatly from one device to another. And not only does the graphics play a role, there are other factors which are equally involved such as battery degradation, CPU usage, disk consumption and I/O usage. It all contributes to the demise of game.

 

4) Favor Revenue Streams From In-App Purchases

SuperData’s detailed report indicates that almost 80% of the digital game revenues come from free-to-play games online. There are several in-app purchases such as purchasing extra lives, character enhancements, and other gem packs. In-app purchases are a significant part of the revenue generating process for such mobile app solutions. In case, if your free app provides a bad experience to its users, then you can say goodbye to that extra purchases that could come your way.

Lastly, it is important that developers should design the perfect in-app purchase strategy for customers. Apparently, ensure that developers are working in order to make the experience better.

So here are my four top advice for the future of mobile game developers. I hope this had been an informative read. We hope to enlighten you with more information in the near future.