Eh, I disagree. I feel that once the smart phone boom settles the market will mature and we'll get out of this free to play craze, allowing for developers to make more traditional games at a higher price and result in much higher quality titles. Combine that with attachable controllers (hopefully) becoming standardized and eventually I see smart phones being looked upon as the default gaming device to the general population, just like how consoles replaced arcades as the default gaming device.
The smartphone market will never invest money into a game in one lump sum for a large chunk of content and will never embrace physical controllers.
Its been 6-7 years that we have really had smartphone games and its trajectory and preference for "free" simple and monetization laden titles has been made clear. The expectation is that any single purchase for games on a smartphone is .99 or less than 4.99. Even if you do that purchase 20-30 times over the course of a year, almost none of those buyers would have spent $30 up front.
Greed, plagarism, psychological tricks, and hiding costs and currencies behind currencies behind random loot drop systems is now the standard for the platform. It works and it's profitable so there is no reason to change that course anytime in the next few years.
I still expect a crash when people realize what a scam and waste all these games are. Probably 3-4 years after the market saturation of the smart phone market. When there are less new smartphone owners there will be less players of these games.
The biggest problem is that there is almost no interest in buyers who try a variety of apps. They are all going for the people who will keep playing and spending in one game everyday. The problem is that when people get tired of / realize how much money is being wasted on these games they don't move on to a new one and keep spending.
I don't know how many people told me this very thing about candy crush. "I wasted too much time on it" "my kids spent too much" and deleted it and never looked back.
The people playing these games aren't playing because they love games. The games were designed to hook and compel you on an almost habitual basis. If you ask most candy crush players why they don't play console or traditional games they will most likely say:
They are too confusing.
They cost too much.
They waste too much time.
Only one of those is not true of candy crush eventually. And those other two are going to push non traditional gamers away from mobile games eventually.
