Mobile MMORPGs and MMOs - The subsequent Frontier?
Ever Since Ultima Online brought the MMORPG genre to mainstream audiences in 1997, the genre is growing in popularity and is now dominated with free to play MMORPGs like Tera and Alien: The Old Republic as well as subscription titles like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG Market is huge and some of the very most successful games generate upwards of $1 billion annually. Despite the success of client based games on my pc, there's a new platform around that's largely untapped - mobile.
Mobile MMORPGs
Mobile MMOs and MMORPGs are a huge growth area for online game developers. Blizzard Entertainment released Hearthstone on Android and iOS devies in April, 2015 and it is already seeing huge success. Mobile games like Puzzle and Dragon and Brave Trials are bridging the space betweeen casual and hardcore RPGs and are both super successful. Puzzle and Dragons makes over $1m each day in revenue in Japan according to its parent company, GungHo Online Entertainment. Probably the most successful games about the mobile platform today though are still casual puzzle games like Candy Crush, but traditional MMORPGs already are making their way over to smartphones. Perfect World Entertainment in China continues to be quick to embrace mobile being a platform for hardcore MMORPGs. Their mobile titles Condor Heroes, Dark Dawn, and Swordsman will also be big hits and rank inside the top 100 iOS App Stores in China. ChangYou's Dragon 3D has brought in over $2m on its release day in China.
In the western world though, mobile MMORPGs are merely starting to grow on mobile. Currently, strategy games like Game of War and Clash of Clans would be the biggest and most successful games on the platform. The growth of mobile gaming though can result in the growth of mobile MMORPGs. I don't expect full fledged MMORPGs like World of Warcraft with a lot of moving parts succeed on mobile, but simpler games should thrive. Much like the free to play business design disrupted traditional pay to try out MMORPGs in the West, the transition to mobile will force game developers to adapt and release games because of this rapidly growing medium.