The days of playing microscopic versions ofTetrisandPac-Manon one’s flip-phone are long gone, as mobile gaming has created a league of its own, sometimes even competing with console and PC gaming. Some of the industry’smost popular games likeGenshin ImpactandFortniteeventually found their way over to mobile devices, and mobile hits likePokemon GOandClash of Clanshave solidified the platform’s space in the industry.
While much of the discourse surrounding mobile gaming today focuses onEpic Games' legal battle with Apple,something that may have slipped past most mobile gamers is that the file sizes of mobile games have increased exponentially in recent years. Data recently released by mobile analyst Sensor Tower has shown significant file size increases for the top 100 most popular iOS games since 2016.
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According to Sensor Tower’s data,iOSgames have seen a 76% increase in file size when compared to 5 years ago. Additionally, iOS games have experienced an average 30.3% increase in file size in just the past year, as shown below. By far, the mobile game with the biggest change in file size from 2019 to 2020 was theDoubleDowncasino slots game, with a 106.9% increase.Fortnitealso experienced a significant file size increase, despite no longer being available on the iOS App Store at the moment.
Of course, this all goes without saying that the storage capabilities of iOS devices, and mobile devices in general, has greatly increased in recent years. For example, 2016’s iPhone 7 could be purchased with a size of 32GB, which is no longer an option with last year’s iPhone 12, which comes with a baseline storage size of 64GB.
According to Sensor Tower, the average mobile game was about 264 megabytes in 2016, while it is around 465 megabytes in 2020.Robloxhas been all the rageamong young gamers recently, making it the top-grossing game on the iOS App Store last year. The popular game creation platform saw a 20% increase in file size in just the past year alone, and a 73% increase since 2016.
Sensor Tower also revealed that overall, the game with the largest file size increase since 2016 was Zynga and NaturalMotion’sCSR Racing 2, which jumped 123.3% since 2016 to a whopping 3.8 gigabytes. Additionally,Supercell’s massively popularClash of Clanssaw a 36.5% increase in file size just from 2019 to 2020.
Just the other day,Amazon launched its GameOn platformon iOS, combining elements of Twitch and TikTok focused on capturing, editing, and sharing mobile gaming content. Now, as AAA experiences likePUBG Mobile,Genshin Impact, andCall of Duty: Mobilehave become mainstays in the mobile gaming industry, it will be interesting to see how the landscape of the platform changes in the future.
