Asymco: Review of Apple iOS Device Gaming Platform

With the popularity of smartphones and tablets, the platform war for mobile device operating systems is becoming increasingly fierce. As an important part of the platform, mobile platform games play a key role in this war. At this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple provided the latest data on the number of its Game Center accounts. As shown in the figure below:

Before the acquisition, OpenFeint, a third-party gaming platform on iOS devices, announced in October 2011 that it had 180 million users playing games on iOS devices. Another piece of data is that Microsoft's Xbox Live currently has 40 million users (Xbox users total 66 million). This huge user base pays $1 billion in service fees each year. Unlike Xbox Live, users of Apple Game Center can enjoy the service for free.

iOS devices themselves can be seen as a gaming platform, and Apple launched Game Center not to profit from it, but to attract more users and obtain user information. In addition, based on the user information provided by Game Center, the sales of games on iOS devices can also be evaluated.

The following is a chart of cumulative sales of various gaming devices (the data in the chart shows the popularity of games and user engagement) [1]:

The following are the conclusions drawn from the chart analysis:

There are changes in market participants;

Every generation of console market has a leader;

The best-selling game console is the Nintendo DS, followed closely by the PlayStation 2. [2]

Game Center has 130 million accounts, making it the third largest gaming platform;

In 2011, Apple's third-party game platform OpenFeint said that iOS devices had 180 million users, and the cumulative sales of iOS devices had exceeded Nintendo DS;

No gaming device currently has more than 200 million users;

Judging from the current sales growth rate of Apple iOS devices, the number of Game Center users will exceed 200 million by the end of the year.

At the developer conference, Apple provides developers with data on games, downloads, and payments to prove that the development of Apple's iOS system is in good shape. In addition, Game Center accounts are another indicator to be considered in statistics. It not only shows the growth in the number of iOS device users, but also shows the popularity of iOS devices. However, the comparative evaluation method provided by Game Center is not the most accurate, because this evaluation method only compares Game Center with other game platforms.

Of course, as long as the sales of various gaming devices change, their rankings will also change.

Notes:

【1】The cumulative sales table does not include gaming devices with sales of less than 10 million (such as PlayStation Vita). Since it also does not include home computers, some data is missing in this table.

【2】This Wikipedia article contradicts previous statements.