PC, Console Gaming gives way to Mobile Games in 2017

If you thought you’d already found the best mobile games for iPad and iPhone, think again. For years now, PC and console video games have been the focal point of innovation. 2017 will be different. This is the year mobile games will finally get all the attention from developers.

Mobile gaming has grown immensely over the last decade, ever since the first smartphone – the original iPhone – was introduced in 2007. PC and console video games like Call of Duty, Dota and League of Legends may have been the preferred MMOs of that generation, but technology is progressing rapidly. Now days, everyone seems to be converting to mobile gameplay faster than a horde of teenage girls chasing after the latest and greatest boy band.

I’m not exactly sure what it is that’s attracting the masses to hand-held flat screens. Maybe it’s the portability of it, or the effortless, tap-and-tilt gameplay. Perhaps its the HD graphics and 4k resolution of today’s latest models. It could be the mind-boggling assortment of mobile games that have appeared on the app stores lately.

Whatever it is, I honestly believe the best mobile games are yet to come, and I think augmented and virtual reality will have a lot to do with it.

2017 The Year of AR & VR Mobile Games

Augmented Reality (AR) had an enormous impact on the way we played mobile games in 2016. PokemonGO used AR to get mobile gamers off the couch and out of the house, turning the entire world into a playground. It’s success was phenomenal.

Whether another game will ever come along that has such an intense effect on the global population – young and old – is hard to say. But no doubt developers will try their absolute hardest to mimic that popularity in 2017.

Virtual Reality (VR) is guaranteed to rise to all new heights this year. Millions of people awoke Christmas day to find VR headsets under the tree (yes, even I was one of them). I spent a good deal of time that morning looking up VR mobile games, and while riding roller coasters and exploring the deep blue sea or outer space was incredible, it’s obvious that there’s a great deal of room for improvement here.

The horror apps are extremely popular, but most of them were hastily developed just to get something on the market. Some of the paid horror apps are better, but again, I believe the best VR mobile games are yet to come.

What Mobile Games Lack

There are drawbacks to playing games on an iPad. You don’t have a physical controller in your hand with endless buttons to perform all sorts of actions. Our brain’s inherent muscle memory teaches us to become adept at pressing these buttons, building an enormous level of skill the more we play.

Mobile games don’t have that option. Instead, we use up to two virtual buttons by placing out thumbs in the right position on the screen. However, mobile games also incorporate vernacular technology that allows us to tilt an iPad in different directions to move around, speed up or whatever the corresponding function may be. I’ve never tried handling my 55” flat-screen in such a manner, and don’t imagine it would be very comfortable, or productive.

But what the best mobile games lack, they make up for in many other ways. We’ve become so accustomed to tapping, swiping, pinching and tilting that it comes naturally these days. Developers will take full advantage of that, along with all the new AR and VR technology available to them, to create a whole to new realm of amazing mobile games for iPad in 2017.