Trends in mobile gaming in Asia, according to industry expert Dr. Serkan Toto

Games in Asia was at the Astro #GOInnovate conference in Cyberjaya, Kuala Lumpur, last weekend. Several keynotes were held as part of the conference, including one from the Japan-based games industry consultant, Dr. Serkan Toto.

Before Dr. Toto summarized trends of mobile gaming in Asia, he put the market into perspective. According to several market reports, the Asia-Pacific games market, and in particular the mobile market, has huge growth projected all the way until 2017. Less clear are the trends leading to all this projected growth. Dr. Toto’s presentation did a great job of highlighting them for the rest of us.

The slides are pretty self-explanatory but here’s a bit more on some of them if you so require.

Smartphone gaming

Although Asia is one of the regions in the world where feature phone games are still big, smartphone adoption in Asia is rising.

Tablet gaming

This isn’t really related to Asia, but still quite an important trend. Tablet gaming refers to games specifically made for tablets. Vainglory, announced at the recent iPhone 6 launch, and the Malaysia-developed The Dreamcatcher are two such games.

Indie gaming

The accessibility of the mobile space, and ease of distribution via platforms like Steam and app stores, are contributing to the rise of the indie (mobile) developer.

Cloud-based gaming and convergence

Streaming AAA or console games from the cloud onto devices like the iPad. World of Warcraft was streamed onto an iPad as early as 2010. Sony hopped onto the bandwagon when it bought the streaming service Gaikai, and Square Enix recently got onboard with the announcement of its DiveIn service. Japan’s own NTT Docomo had a service that streamed Dragon Quest X to tablet and smartphone users last year, allowing them to play with friends who were on consoles. Sony’s new Xperia Z3 phone can also display Playstation 4 content.

However it’s important to remember that in large parts of Asia, mobile internet connectivity is still a problem in terms of speed and data cost.

(See: Vietnamese gamers cope with second Internet outage this year)

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