European devs are moving from mobile to PC

A GDC Europe survey has provided further evidence that developers are moving away from the crowded mobile market and towards the PC.

At the start of this week, TIGA released data from a survey of British developers that showed the PC growing in popularity relative to mobile, particularly among new studios placing their first bets.

And a survey from GDC has yielded similar results for European developers. 62 per cent of respondents will release their next games on PC, compared to 50 per cent for mobile devices. In terms of their last games, 46 per cent of respondents choe PC and only 40 per cent chose mobile. The latter is particularly significant because it represents a reversal. In last year's survey, 40 per cent chose mobile for their last game, and 38 per cent chose PC.

And this trend is likely to continue next year. An impressive 67 per cent of respondents are targeting PC for their next project, compared to 53 per cent for mobile.

While mobile is the most lucrative part of the industry in terms of dollars earned, the practical reality of working in the market may have forced developers to seek more fertile lands.

Hundreds of new games are released every day, production budgets are on the rise, and the biggest companies are lavishing ever greater sums on marketing and advertising. Hard luck tales are not difficult to find, as evidenced by our own investigation into the mobile development scene earlier this year.

One aspect of the problem on mobile is the uneasy balance between the tens of thousands of developers making games, and the dominance of just two storefronts from which to buy them. That problem also exists on PC, with a huge majority of all sales flowing through Valve's Steam platform.

Valve seems far more engaged with helping to restore balance than either Apple or Google, but its discovery solutions may prove insufficient if the rate of growth in game submissions continues to increase.

To read the full GDC Europe report, follow the link.