Mobile phones and tablets are all the rage this generation, so it's no surprise that game publishers are putting more and more focus into making games that will reach the masses. EA, Square Enix and Capcom are just a few companies that have produced pretty decent games on the mobile platform. Because free-to-play is so popular on mobile, plus, you can pretty much get away with all sorts of horrible business practices there due to the large amount of horrible games which are pretty much cash-grabs already present, it's pretty attractive. Square Enix has some of the most expensive games on mobile, even if they are horrible ports; EA has free-to-play and one-off purchase games which are doing pretty well; Capcom already has some good games there, and recently, are investing profits from Monster Hunter into mobile gaming development.
Mobile devices are getting more powerful at an alarming rate, driven by competition between the major OS developers and mobile makers and there are increasingly more talented game developers taking more interest in the platform. It is undeniable that there is much money to be made from the large audience. Raising awareness for their games might be an issue for smaller, less well-known developers, but for already established companies, people will still support even if the are 'evil corporations'.
Is this good for gaming then? Well, more games is always good, or is it? The issue with mobile gaming is, well, that they are basically designed for mobile gaming, and not in the way that 3DS and Vita games are. They are meant for very shorts bursts of play, and tend to have 'energy' restrictions or paid boosts.
This is all well and good, because that's how gaming on the go is these days, but the tend to get ported, with all these restrictions carried over, and controls not optimized, plus chances are, suddenly, it's several times more costly. It's the same the other way round too. Games on PC or consoles are getting ported, and again, not optimized for touch controls. However, in this case, devices like controllers for phones and the Nvidia Shield are solving the problem. But do we really need to buy another device...?
Companies need to take more pride in their work and stop doing lazy ports just to make a quick buck. There are companies who do it pretty well within it's limitations like Capcom's Street Fighter. Ultimately, it's still difficult to find good stuff in the mobile space because too many 'non-gamers' will still pick up crap games, and it's practically impossible to review so many games out on the market. Worse, Apple and Google don't seem to mind people ripping off devs and creating clones or already popular games.
Will this ever change? I don't know, but the good thing is as a gaming community, gems do get found and the word is passed around. Also, more gamers is always a good thing, well probably, cause there'll be more pricks too...
