- We’re in a renaissance for mobile porting, with a flood of games coming over to mobile
- While not spearheaded by Balatro, it’ll likely be held up as an advent
- As technology keeps advancing porting will give way to simultaneous launches
Looking through the App Store over the last two weeks there’s been a great mix of games listed as coming soon. There’s your regular new mobile titles that will probably do quite well, things like King Arthur Legends Rise from Netmarble, Archero 2 from Habby, a new Bloons game – Bloons Card Storm – from Ninja Kiwi. Even Steppy Pants returning through HalfBrick+ isn’t too much of a surprise.
However, and maybe we’re all just a bit more sensitive to this due to the recent successful launch of the Balatro port, something very notable is that we’re seeing a lot more PC and Console ports appearing on the AppStore.
We were already well aware of Raw Fury’s upcoming port of Cassette Beasts EX to mobile, so that wasn’t unexpected, however it’s joined by the likes of Plug In Digital’s port of Turnip Boy Robs a Bankr, Toge Interactive’s A Space For the Unbound, Grid Legends: Deluxe Edition (from Feral Interactive, acting on behalf of Codemasters), Black Salt Games’ moody fishing sim Dredge and Umanimation’s Dordogne. Oh, and let’s not forget that Capcom are continuing their Resident Evil porting onslaught with Resident Evil 2 next up.
It would appear that we’re in somewhat of a porting renaissance, as we well should be given not only Balatro’s recent success and the graphically-impressive Resident Evil ports, but also the success of cross-platform games like Genshin Impact. We also have games like Infinity Nikki approaching, which will draw PC, mobile and console audiences even closer together.Â
Of course, this isn’t the start of all of this. Companies like Playstack, Playdigious and Feral Interactive have been competently porting games for years now, while indie publishers like Devolver, Raw Fury and Daedalic Entertainment have continued to treat mobile as part of their wheelhouses.
We’ve been celebrating great ports here for a while, but the reason that this feels like a renaissance and resurgence is how recent those games mentioned above feel. Even ignoring the quantity, the time taken to port is shortening and that’s a great sign. Soon, we could even get to a port where more games are managing simultaneous releases.
Mobile phones, and their graphic capabilities are continuing to improve at a much faster rate than consoles and PC, which some could argue is due to the fact that they are simply having to catch up – and that miniaturization is an expected stage of technological evolution – however, if it’s easier to catch up then sooner or later you’re going to catch up, and then it comes down to where the money is. This is the same thing we saw with the mobile phone market in general, with previously ‘outsider’, non-traditional phone manufacturers like Huawei and Xiaomi racing into the competition and creating a flourishing mid-market that sometimes edges out phones like Sony and Google’s own Pixel in popularity.
So, it’s entirely logical to expect to not only see more and more indie titles exploring mobile markets, but also – as the platforms all become technologically uniform – to see Western games simultaneously launching on mobile alongside console and PC (because, let’s be honest, it’s mostly developers from SEA and East-Asian regions currently doing it).
I should take a step back for a moment here and state that there’s actually more games than ever making the step from mobile over to console and PC – the reverse journey, if you will. Games like Crossy Road Castles, Dadish 3D and Alto’s Oddyssey are all games I have installed on my Xbox that I thoroughly enjoyed on my phone first.
As somebody who occasionally strafes the line between the worlds of writing for players and for developers, I see a lot of statistics. There are now more games being released a month on Steam than on mobile – in fact, it’s been like that for a few years now.
As that information becomes more widespread, and the way that developers communicate with their communities continues to evolve through whatever it is that’s happening to social media, it’s perhaps becoming much more viable to experiment with mobile than it is with PC.
Add to that the alternative App Stores and alternative monetisation methods like Webstores, and I think it’s easy to see that we’re about to enter a renaissance for premium, and ported, mobile gaming.
After that… I think it’ll only be a matter of time before we get to largely simultaneous launches for mobile and console – although the industry will need to start expanding again after all these layoffs, with a new influx of mobile-friendly publishers to help guide things in.
