When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced in September the iPod touch was “the number one portable game player in the world,” many took the comment as the executive’s usual bluster. Then Apple created its Game Center for iOS users. Now comes a survey seeming to support Apple’s words and actions: More than half of all U.S. mobile gamers battle it out on iOS devices, one survey reports.
Additionally, U.S.-based iOS gamers nearly outnumber domestic Nintendo DS and DSi players, according to a recent International Gamers survey. Apple’s platform claims 40.1 million U.S. gamers, compared to 41 million American Nintendo DS and DSi players. In fact 14 million U.S. gamers own both an iPod touch and a Nintendo DS. One good bit of news for Nintendo: the DS is still far ahead of the iOS platform in Europe.
The audience for Apple iOS games in the U.S. is twice that of Sony’s 19 million American Playstation Portable owners, the survey from NewZoo also states.
“Recent growth in the sales figures of the iPod touch could be an indication that people are increasingly seeing Apple’s devices as a game platform,” NewZoo Managing Director Peter Warman said. Young fans, after using their parents iPhone or iPod touch, now want an Apple device for their own, he added.
Despite a smaller percentage of iOS gamers spending money to play on the devices, Warman describes Apple’s tactic of offering free games “a key advantage” for both Apple’s platform and Google’s Android software. The survey found while 67 percent of Nintendo gamers spend money to play, just 45 percent of iPod touch or iPhone owners do so. In a sign of a possible gaming future for Apple’s new tablet device, 72 percent of iPad users spend more than $10 per month on games, versus over half of Nintendo DS or PSP users, the survey found.
Previously, Apple viewed software only as a way to entice more hardware purchases. However, in 2009, Apple controlled 19 percent of mobile gaming software revenue, more than triple the 5 percent reported just a year earlier, according to Flurry Analytics. In a nod to the growing importance of gaming, along with opening a Game Center, the Cupertino, Calif. company has also added a games editor for its App Store and reportedly is negotiating with a Chinese game developer.
[AppleInsider]
