A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedba ...

that is typically played on a

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

. The term also refers to all games that are played on any

portable device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical k ...

, including from

( feature phone or

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whi ...

tablet Tablet may refer to: Medicine * Tablet (pharmacy), a mixture of pharmacological substances pressed into a small cake or bar, colloquially called a "pill" Computing * Tablet computer, a mobile computer that is primarily operated by touching the ...

PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting po ...

handheld game console A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the co ...

portable media player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

graphing calculator A graphing calculator (also graphics calculator or graphic display calculator) is a handheld computer that is capable of plotting graphs, solving simultaneous equations, and performing other tasks with variables. Most popular graphing calcu ...

, with and without

network availability In reliability engineering, the term availability has the following meanings: * The degree to which a system, subsystem or equipment is in a specified operable and committable state at the start of a mission, when the mission is called for at ...

. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994. In 1997,

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

launched ''

Snake Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more ...

''. Snake, which was

pre-installed Pre-installed software (also known as bundled software) is software already installed and licensed on a computer or smartphone bought from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).Nokia 6110, using the

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of Light, visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from ...

port, was also the first

two-player A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, o ...

game for mobile phones. Today, mobile games are usually downloaded from an app store but in some cases are also preloaded in the handheld devices by the OEM or by the mobile operator when purchased, via infrared connection,

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

, or

memory card A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a so ...

, or side loaded onto the handset with a cable. Downloadable mobile games were first commercialised in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

circa the launch of NTT DoCoMo's

I-mode NTT DoCoMo's i-mode is a mobile internet (distinct from wireless internet) service popular in Japan. Unlike Wireless Application Protocols, i-mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards, including web access, e-mail, and the pa ...

platform in 1999, and by the early 2000s were available through a variety of platforms throughout

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

and ultimately most territories where modern carrier networks and handsets were available by the mid-2000s. However, mobile games distributed by

mobile operators A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sell ...

and third party portals (channels initially developed to monetise downloadable

ringtones A ringtone, ring tone or ring is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Originally referring to and made by the electromechanical striking of bells, the term now refers to any sound on any device alerting of a new incoming ...

wallpapers Wallpaper is a material used in interior decoration to decorate the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" (so ...

and other small pieces of content using premium

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

or direct carrier charges as a billing mechanism) remained a marginal form of gaming until

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

's iOS App Store was launched in 2008. As the first mobile content marketplace operated directly by a mobile platform holder, the App Store significantly changed the consumer behaviour and quickly broadened the market for mobile games, as almost every smartphone owner started to download mobile apps.

History

Towards the end of the 20th century, mobile phone

ownership Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. Ownership can involve multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different ...

became

ubiquitous Omnipresence or ubiquity is the property of being present anywhere and everywhere. The term omnipresence is most often used in a religious context as an attribute of a deity or supreme being, while the term ubiquity is generally used to descr ...

in the industrialised world - due to the establishment of industry standards, and the rapid fall in cost of handset ownership, and use driven by

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...

. As a result of this explosion, technological advancement by handset manufacturers became rapid. With these technological advances, mobile phone games also became increasingly sophisticated, taking advantage of exponential improvements in display,

processing Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...

, storage,

interfaces Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Int ...

network bandwidth In computing, bandwidth is the maximum rate of data transfer across a given path. Bandwidth may be characterized as network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth. This definition of ''bandwidth'' is in contrast to the field of signal p ...

and

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

functionality. The first such game that demonstrated the desire for handset games was a version of ''

'' that

had included on its devices since 1997. In 1999, NTT Docomo launched the

i-mode NTT DoCoMo's i-mode is a mobile internet (distinct from wireless internet) service popular in Japan. Unlike Wireless Application Protocols, i-mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards, including web access, e-mail, and the pa ...

mobile platform in Japan, allowing mobile games to be downloaded onto

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

. Several Japanese video game developers announced games for the i-mode platform that year, such as

Konami , is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machines, slot machines, and arcade cabinets. Konami has ca ...

announcing its dating simulation ''

Tokimeki Memorial is a dating simulation series by Konami. It consists of six main games in addition to many spin-offs. The games are notable in the dating sim genre for being highly nonlinear. Their nickname amongst their fans is the contraction ''TokiMemo''. T ...

''. The same year, Nintendo and

Bandai is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational toy manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Taitō, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Toys & Collectables America and Bandai UK, are respectively headquartered in Irvine ...

were developing mobile phone adapters for their

handheld game consoles A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the con ...

, the Game Boy Color and WonderSwan, respectively. By 2001, i-mode had users in Japan, along with more advanced handsets with graphics comparable to 8-bit consoles. A wide variety of games were available for the i-mode service, along with announcements from established video game developers such as

Taito is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, vending machines and jukeboxes into Japan. I ...

, Konami,

Namco was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company, headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo. It held several international branches, including Namco America in Santa Clara, California, Namco Europe in London, Namco Taiwan in Kaohsiun ...

, and Hudson Soft, including ports of classic arcade games and 8-bit

console games A console game is a type of video game consisting of images and often sounds generated by a video game console, which are displayed on a television or similar audio-video system, and that can be manipulated by a player. This manipulation usually ...

Edge (video game) mockup on Sony Ericsson phone

The launch of Apple's iPhone in 2007 and the App Store in 2008 radically changed the market. The iPhone's focus on larger memory, multitasks, and additional sensing devices, including the

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

in later model, made it ideal for casual games, while the App Store made it easy for developers to create and post apps to publish, and for users to search for and obtain new games. Further, the App Store added the ability to support in-app purchases in October 2009. This allowed games like '' Angry Birds'' and ''

Cut the Rope Cut may refer to: Common uses * The act of cutting, the separation of an object into two through acutely-directed force ** A type of wound ** Cut (archaeology), a hole dug in the past ** Cut (clothing), the style or shape of a garment ** Cut ( ...

'' to find new monetization models away from the traditional

premium Premium may refer to: Marketing * Premium (marketing), a promotional item that can be received for a small fee when redeeming proofs of purchase that come with or on retail products * Premium segment, high-price brands or services in marketing, ...

"pay once" model. Meanwhile, Apple's disruption caused the market to stabilized around iPhone devices and Google's Android-based phones which offered a similar app store through Google Play. A further major shift game with 2012's ''

Candy Crush Saga ''Candy Crush Saga'' is a free-to-play tile-matching video game released by King on April 12, 2012, originally for Facebook; other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed. It is a variation of their browser game ''Ca ...

'' and '' Puzzle & Dragons'', games that used a stamina-like gameplay feature found in social-network games like '' FarmVille'' to limit the number of times one could play it in a single period, but allowed optional in-app purchases to restore that stamina immediately and continue playing. This new monetization brought in millions of players to both games and millions of dollars in revenue, establishing the "

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical ...

" model that would be a common approach for many mobile game going forward. Mobile gaming grew rapidly over the next several years, buoyed by rapid expansion in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. By 2016, top mobile games were earning over a year, and the total revenue for the mobile games sector had surpassed that of other video game areas. Other major trends in mobile games have include the

hyper-casual game A hyper-casual game is a mobile video game which is easy-to-play, and usually free-to-play; they also feature very minimalistic user interfaces. Popularized in 2017 by game makers such as Kwalee, Ketchapp and Voodoo, these games can be quickly ...

such as '' Flappy Bird'' and ''

Crossy Road ''Crossy Road'' is an arcade video game released on 20 November 2014. It was developed and published by Australian video game developer Hipster Whale, with the name and concept of the game playing on the age-old joke "Why did the chicken cross t ...

'' and location-based games like '' Pokémon Go''. Mobile gaming has impacted the larger video game market by drawing demand away from handheld video game consoles; both Nintendo and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

had seen major drops in sales of their 2011 handhelds compared to their 2004 predecessors as a result of mobile gaming. At the same time, mobile gaming introduced the concept of microconsoles, low-cost, low-powered home video game consoles that used mobile operating systems to take advantage of the wide variety of games available on these platforms.

Calculator games

Calculator gaming is a form of gaming in which

games A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (suc ...

are played on

programmable calculator Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored program. Most are Turing complete, and, as such, are theoretically general-purpose computers. However, their user inter ...

s, especially

s. In 1980,

Casio is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturing corporation headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Its products include calculators, mobile phones, digital cameras, electronic musical instruments, and analogue and digital watches. ...

's MG-880 pocket calculator had a built-in "Invaders" game (essentially a downscaled '' Space Invaders'' clone), released in the Summer that year. Another early example is the type-in program '' Darth Vader's Force Battle'' for the TI-59, published in ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

'' in October 1980. The magazine also published a version of '' Hunt the Wumpus'' for the HP-41C. Few other games exist for the earliest of programmable calculators (including the

Hewlett-Packard 9100A The Hewlett-Packard 9100A (hp 9100A) is an early programmable calculator (or computer), first appearing in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our ...

, one of the first scientific calculators), such as the long-popular ''

Lunar Lander A lunar lander or Moon lander is a spacecraft designed to land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2021, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing six lunar landings from 1969 to 19 ...

'' game often used as an early programming exercise. However, limited program address space and lack of easy program storage made calculator gaming a rarity even as programmables became cheap and relatively easy to obtain. It was not until the early 1990s when

s became more powerful and cheap enough to be common among

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

students for use in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. The new graphing calculators, with their ability to transfer files to one another and from a

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

for backup, could double as game consoles. Calculators such as HP-48 and TI-82 could be programmed in proprietary

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s such as RPL programming language or TI-BASIC directly on the calculator; programs could also be written in

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence b ...

or (less often) C on a desktop computer and transferred to the calculator. As calculators became more powerful and memory sizes increased, games increased in complexity. By the 1990s, programmable calculators were able to run implementations by hobbyists of games such as '' Lemmings'' and ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...

'' (Lemmings for HP-48 was released in 1993; Doom for HP-48 was created in 1995). Some games such as Dope Wars caused controversy when students played them in

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes co ...

. The look and feel of these games on an HP-48 class calculator, due to the lack of dedicated audio and video circuitry providing hardware acceleration, can at most be compared to the one offered by 8-bit handheld consoles such as the early

Game Boy The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same t ...

or the

Gameking GameKing is a brand of handheld game consoles, designed and developed by Timetop in 2003, for the Hong Kong consumer market. The brand has three consoles, the GameKing I, the GameKing II and the GameKing III. A fourth console, the Handy Game, ...

(

low resolution Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The term applies to digital images, film images, and other types of images. "Higher resolution" means more image detail. Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Resolution quantifies how c ...

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochr ...

or grayscale graphics), or to the built-in games of non-

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

or BREW enabled

cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...

s. Games continue to be programmed on graphing calculators with increasing complexity. A wave of games appeared after the release of the TI-83 Plus/ TI-84 Plus series, among TI's first graphing calculators to natively support assembly. TI-BASIC programming also rose in popularity after the release of third-party libraries. Assembly remained the language of choice for these calculators, which run on a Zilog Z80 processor, although some assembly implements have been created to ease the difficulty of learning assembly language. For those running on a

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...

processor (like the TI-89), C programming (possible using

TIGCC {{Infobox software , name = TIGCC , logo = , caption = The Logo for the TIGCC Project. , developer = The TIGCC Team , latest_release_version = 0.96-beta8 , latest_release_date = {{release date and age, 2006, 10, 31 , operating_system = Linux/Unix, ...

) has begun to displace assembly. Because they are easy to program without outside tools, calculator games have survived despite the proliferation of

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physica ...

s such as

s and

Industry structure

Total global

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive rev ...

from mobile games was estimated at $2.6 billion in 2005 by ''Informa Telecoms'' and ''Media''. Total revenue in 2008 was $5.8 billion. The largest mobile gaming markets were in the

Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Paci ...

nations

and

, followed by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. In 2012, the market had already reached $7.8 billion A new report was released in November 2015 showing that 1887 app developers would make more than one million dollars on the Google and iOS app stores in 2015. Mobile gaming revenue reached $50.4 billion in 2017, occupying 43% of the entire global gaming market and poised for further growth. It is expected to surpass the combined revenues from both PC gaming and

console gaming A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a t ...

in 2018.

Different platforms

Mobile games have been developed to run on a wide variety of platforms and technologies. These include the (today largely defunct) Palm OS,

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

, Adobe Flash Lite, NTT DoCoMo's

DoJa DoJa profile is a Java application environment specification for DoCoMo's i-mode mobile phone. DoJa is based on the Java ME CLDC API that is defined in the Java Community Process (JCP). DoJa is a profile defined by NTT DoCoMo to provide commun ...

, Sun's

, Qualcomm's BREW,

WIPI Wipi, also known as Gidra, Jibu or Oriomo, is a Papuan language of New Guinea. It is a member of the Eastern Trans-Fly languages, Eastern Trans-Fly family, the other languages of this family being Gizrra, Meriam Mir and Bine language, Bine. The f ...

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy ...

, Nook and early incarnations of

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

. Today, the most widely supported platforms are

's iOS and

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

's Android. The mobile version of

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

(formerly

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

) is also actively supported, although in terms of market share remains marginal compared to iOS and Android.

was at one time the most common platform for mobile games, however its performance limits led to the adoption of various native binary formats for more sophisticated games. Due to its ease of porting between mobile operating systems and extensive developer community,

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a ...

is one of the most widely used engines used by modern mobile games. Apple provide a number of proprietary technologies (such as

Metal A metal (from ancient Greek, Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, e ...

) intended to allow developers to make more effective use of their hardware in iOS-native games.

Monetization

With the introduction of the

iOS App Store The App Store is an app store platform, developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS Software Dev ...

and support for in-app purchases by October 2009, the methods through which mobile games earn revenue have diverged significantly away from traditional game models on consoles or computers. Since 2009, a number of models have developed, and a mobile game developer/publisher may use one or a combination of these models to make revenue. ;Premium :The premium model is akin to the traditional model where the user pays for the full game upfront. Additional

downloadable content Downloadable content (DLC) is additional content created for an already released video game, distributed through the Internet by the game's publisher. It can either be added for no extra cost or it can be a form of video game monetization, enabli ...

may be available which can be purchased separately. Initial games released to the App Store before in-app purchases were available used this approach, and still common for many types of games. ;Freemium :The

or "free to try" model offers a small portion of the game for free, comparable to a

game demo A game demo is a trial version of a video game that is limited to a certain time limit or a point in progress, which leads to the player buying the game if they liked it. A game demo comes in forms such as shareware, demo disc, downloadable s ...

. After completing this, the player is given the option to make a one-time in-app purchase to unlock the rest of the game. Early games shortly after the introduction of the in-app purchase feature used this approach such as ''

'' and '' Fruit Ninja''. ;Free-to-play :A free-to-play game requires no cost at all to play, and generally is designed to be playable from start to finish without having to spend any money into the game. However, the game will include gameplay mechanics which may slow progress towards completing the game. Commonly in mobile games, this is some form of energy or stamina that limits how many turns or actions a player can take each day. By using in-app purchases, the player can immediately restore their energy or stamina and continue on. In-app purchases can also be used to buy power-ups and other items to give the player a limited-time advantage to help complete the game. While free-to-play games had been common on computers prior to mobile, the method was popularized in mobile gaming with ''

'' and '' Puzzle & Dragons''. AppfloodFullScreenInterstitial

;Advertising-supported :A

ad-supported Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...

game will be free to download and play, but periodically or persistently, the game will show an

advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

to the user which they will have to watch through before they can continue with the game. The

developer Developer may refer to: Computers *Software developer, a person or organization who develop programs/applications * Video game developer, a person or business involved in video game development, the process of designing and creating games * Web de ...

earns revenue from the advertising network. In some cases, an in-app purchase allows the player to fully disable ads in these games. ;Subscription model :A subscription-based game will offer a base version with limited features that can be played for free, but additional premium features can be obtained if the user pays a monthly subscription fee. If they terminate their subscription, they lose access to those features, though typically not any game progression related to those features, and can pick up those features later by restarting their subscription. Many game apps are free to play through a combination of these models. Over time, mobile developers of these types of apps have observed that the bulk of their players do not spend any funds on their game, but instead revenues are generated from a small fraction, typically under 10% of their total players. Further, most of the revenue is generated by a very small fraction, about 2%, of the total players, who routinely spend large amounts of money on the game. A similar split on revenue had been seen in social-network games played in browsers. These players are known as "whales", inspired by same term used for high rolling gamblers. The social nature of a mobile game has also been found to affect its revenue, as games that encourage players to work in teams or clans will lead to increased spending from engaged players.

Common limits of mobile games

Mobile games tend to be small in scope (in relation to mainstream PC and console games) and many prioritize innovative design and ease of play over visual spectacle. Storage and memory limitations (sometimes dictated at the platform level) place constraints on file size that presently rule out the direct migration of many modern PC and console games to mobile. One major problem for developers and publishers of mobile games is describing a game in such detail that it gives the customer enough information to make a purchasing decision.

Location-based mobile games

Games played on a mobile device using localization technology like GPS are called location-based games or

location-based mobile game A location-based game (or location-enabled game, or geolocation-based game) is a type of game in which the gameplay evolves and progresses via a player's location. Location-based games must provide some mechanism to allow the player to report th ...

s. These are not only played on mobile hardware but also integrate the player's position into the game concept. In other words, while it does not matter for a normal mobile game where exactly the player is (play them anywhere at any time), the player's coordinate and movement are the main elements in a location-based mobile game. A well known example is the treasure hunt game ''Geocaching'', which can be played on any mobile device with integrated or external GPS receiver. External GPS receivers are usually connected via

. More and more mobile phones with integrated GPS are expected to come. Several other location-based mobile games, such as '' BotFighters'', are in the stage of research prototypes rather than being commercial successes. Location-based mobile games sometimes have augmented reality functionality, such as in the case of Pokemon Go. Usually in these cases the augmented reality functionality is not at the center of the experience.

Augmented reality games

Mobile devices have been used as a platform for Augmented reality (AR in short) games, using the device's camera(s) to as an input for the game. While playing the game, the player aims the device's camera at a location and through the device's screen, sees the area captured by the camera plus computer-generated graphics atop it, augmenting the display and then allowing the player to

interact Advocates for Informed Choice, doing business as, dba interACT or interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization using innovative strategies to advocate for the legal and human rights of children with intersex trai ...

that way. The graphics are generally drawn as to make the generated image appear to be part of the captured background, and will be rendered app memorizing as the player moves the device around. The most successful and notable example for a mobile game that has an augmented reality feature is '' Pokémon Go'' (2016), where the player travels to locations marked on their GPS map and then can enable the augmented reality mode to find Pokémon creatures to capture. However, as of January 2022 there has been a lack of significant AR mobile games success since, with several AR mobile game projects being shut down, such as

Minecraft Earth ''Minecraft Earth'' was an augmented reality and geolocation-based sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios and published by Xbox Game Studios. A spin-off of the video game '' Minecraft'', it was first announced in May 2019, and was available ...

and Niantic's Catan: World Explorers

Multipurpose games

Since mobile devices have become present in the majority of households (at least in the

developed countries A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC), advanced country) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy and advanced technological infrastruct ...

), there are more and more games created with educational, lifestyle and,

health Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organ ...

improvement purposes. For example, mobile games can be used in speech-language pathology, children's

rehabilitation Rehabilitation or Rehab may refer to: Health * Rehabilitation (neuropsychology), therapy to regain or improve neurocognitive function that has been lost or diminished * Rehabilitation (wildlife), treatment of injured wildlife so they can be retur ...

hospitals A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...

(Finnish startup Rehaboo!), acquiring new useful or healthy habits ( Habitica), memorizing things and learning languages ( Memrise). There are also apps with similar purposes which are not games per se, in this case, they are called ''gamified apps''. Sometimes it is difficult to draw a line between multipurpose games and gamified apps.

Multiplayer mobile games

Many mobile games support multiple players, either remotely over a network or locally via

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

, Bluetooth or similar technology. There are several options for playing multiplayer games on mobile phones: live synchronous

tournaments A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...

and turn-based

asynchronous Asynchrony is the state of not being in synchronization. Asynchrony or asynchronous may refer to: Electronics and computing * Asynchrony (computer programming), the occurrence of events independent of the main program flow, and ways to deal wit ...

tournaments. In live tournaments random players from around the world are matched together to compete. This is done using different networks such as Game Center, Google+, and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

. In asynchronous tournaments, there are two methods used by game developers centered around the idea that players matches are recorded and then

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began wi ...

at a later time to other players in the same tournament. Asynchronous gameplay resolves the issue of needing players to have a continuous live connection. This gameplay is different since players take individual turns in the game, therefore allowing players to continue playing against human opponents. This is done using different networks including

. Some companies use a regular turn-based system where the end results are posted so all the players can see who won the tournament. Other companies take screen recordings of live players and broadcast them to other players at a later point in time to allow players to feel that they are always interacting with another human opponent.

Distribution

Mobile games can be distributed in one of four ways: *

Over the Air Over the Air was an annual mobile technology-focused overnight hack day event held in London from 2008 to 2016. The two-day event would include practical and educational talks and a hacking competition. Sponsors of the event have included the ...

(OTA): a game binary file is delivered to the mobile device via wireless carrier networks. * Sideloaded: a game binary file is loaded onto the phone while connected to a PC, either via USB cable or

. * Pre-installed: a game binary file is preloaded onto the device by the

original equipment manufacturer An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

(OEM). * Mobile browser download: a game file is downloaded directly from a mobile website. Until the launch of Apple App Store, in the US, the majority of mobile games were sold by wireless carriers, such as AT&T Mobility,

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

Sprint Corporation Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before it merged with T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. The ...

and

T-Mobile US T-Mobile US, Inc. is an American wireless network operator headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas and Bellevue, Washington, U.S. Its largest shareholder is a multinational telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG, which , holds 48.4 pe ...

. In

, games were distributed equally between carriers and off-deck, third-party stores. After the launch of Apple App Store, the mobile OS platforms like Apple iOS, Google Android, and Microsoft

, the mobile OS developers themselves have launched digital download storefronts that can be run on the devices using the OS or from software used on PCs. These storefronts (like Apple's iOS App Store) act as centralized digital download services from which a variety of entertainment media and software can be downloaded, including games and nowadays majority of games are distributed through them. The popularity of mobile games has increased in the 2000s, as over US$3 billion worth of games were sold in 2007 internationally, and projected annual growth of over 40%. Ownership of a smartphone alone increases the likelihood that a consumer will play mobile games. Over 90% of smartphone users play a mobile game at least once a week. Many mobile games are distributed free to the end user, but carry paid advertising: examples are '' Flappy Bird'' and ''

Doodle Jump ''Doodle Jump'' is a platforming video game developed and published by Croatian studio Lima Sky, for Windows Phone, iPhone OS, BlackBerry, Android, Java Mobile (J2ME), Nokia Symbian, and Xbox 360 for the Kinect platform. It was released worldwid ...

''. The latter follows the "freemium" model, in which the base game is free but additional items for the game can be purchased separately.

References

{{Pervasive games

Game A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (suc ...

Video game platforms Video game terminology