CHART OF THE DAY: Game Makers Are Picking Mobile Devices Over Consoles

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This chart comes from Business Insider Intelligence, a new research and and analysis service focused on the mobile and Internet industries. Sign up for a free trial here.

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Game developers are increasingly turning to smartphones and tablets for their next project.

A survey of 2,500 developers from the organizers of the recent Game Developers Conference found that 58 percent were planning their next project for mobile devices. Approximately 38 percent of those surveyed said their last project was on mobile.

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Over 50 percent of those surveyed said they were independent developers, indicating that their could be some bias towards mobile in the survey, since mobile games are cheaper to develop than budget-busting console games.

Mobile gaming isn't going to knock out more immersive and graphics-driven desktop and console gaming any time soon. Hand-held consoles, however, are directly threatened by the increasingly sophisticated crop of iOS and Android games and will see less and less developer interest.

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Mobile games have been the primary beneficiary of the app store era. No wonder, given they are the largest time bucket on both smartphones and tablets. A BII analysis found that 70 percent of the top 200 grossing apps on the iOS App Store were games (the proportion was 75 percent on Google Play).

Among developers working on mobile, 90 percent planned working on iOS, 75 percent on Android, and only 15 percent on Windows Phone.

Chart of the day shows types of platforms for next game development, march 2013

BII