The State of Mobile Gaming

I need to talk about something serious. Well, not "politics" serious, but "industry" serious.

So, what is the first sentence to come to mind when you think of the iPhone? If you answered, "There's an app for that," then congratulations, you know what we're talking about today.

If you go on the App Store (or Google Play if you use Android), you will find millions, if not billions, of games. And chances are, if they aren't called Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga, it's either a free-to-pay watered down version of a contemporary AAA console game, a port of a Flash game, a Farmville clone, or a Clash of Clans wannabe. It's almost impossible to find any good games. It's like finding a needle in a Mt. Everest-sized haystack. And what's worse is that Apple and Google have almost no control over what gets released on the App Store or Google Play.

Now, anyone who has a basic knowledge of video game history (or simply anyone old enough to have seen the Atari 2600 in stores) should have alarm bells ringing in their heads. This is because this is almost the exact same circumstances that led to a little something called the Video Game Crash of 1983, except many times worse. (For those who don't know, Google it.)

Apple and Google need to step up their game if they want to keep making money of off the mobile gaming industry, or else the App Store and Google Play may collapse the same way the Atari 2600 did.