Driven by the growing popularity of smartphones, the social gaming market is expected to triple to almost US$4bn annually by 2013.
According to a report on the Mobiledia site, Japanese video game company Capcom expects that one-third of its future profits will eventually come from people playing social network-based games on smartphones.
Capcom chairman Kenzo Tsujimoto said the gaming company’s increased profits are climbing rapidly thanks to its mobile offering.
The company forecast in May that mobile gaming would make up about six per cent of its operating profits, but according to Tsujimoto, that figure will increase by five times in a few years. The company is now building up its social networking games in anticipation of mobile gaming’s growth.
Tsujimoto told Bloomberg that the gaming population is expanding thanks to the rising popularity of applications played with smartphones. This smartphone surge, however, is causing a concern among the console market, which is losing players to the mobile sector. The iPhone 4 was reported as the fastest selling portable gaming device in history by the Guinness Book of World Records in May.
