Amid the crisis, gamers flee from consoles to cell phones, research shows

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About a year and a half after the launch of the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, considerable growth in the number of people playing games on consoles was to be expected. However, according to the Games Brasil 2022 Survey, launched this Monday (18), the Brazilian market still does not seem to have adhered to the new generation of video games.

In the midst of an inflationary crisis, with the soaring dollar and logistical problems that impacted the production of electronic equipment, Brazilian video game players switched from the latest generation consoles to the good old cell phone.

According to the survey, carried out over the internet with 13,051 people from 26 states and the Federal District, 48.3% of gamers prefer the cell phone as a means of consuming electronic games, an increase of 6.7 percentage points compared to the survey of the year. past.

In the opposite direction, there was a decrease of 5.8 percentage points in the number of people citing consoles as their main way of playing, going from 25.8% in 2021 to 20% in 2022.

There was also a drop in the percentage of survey participants who consider computers or notebooks as their preferred platform for games, from 27.5% in last year to 23.3%.

More than a preference, the greater use of cell phones seems to be directly linked to income. Also according to the survey, carried out between February 11 and March 7 of this year, 59% of gamers who primarily use smartphones to consume games are from classes C, D and E, while 62.3% of those who play more on consoles are of classes A and B.

“Computers and game consoles have high costs by the standards of most Brazilians. However, smartphones democratize this habit, since there are more of them”, says Carlos Silva, partner at GoGamers, a company belonging to the Sioux Group consultancy, which developed the research in partnership with Blend New Research and ESPM.

The survey shows that 61.6% of respondents say they spent less than R$300 on games in the last year – the price of a first-rate Nintendo game in Brazil –, which helps to explain the preference for smartphones, which have games cheaper. Among the 17.3% who say they haven’t spent anything on games in the last year, 40.2% said they haven’t because of the price.

The same phenomenon is observed in hardware, 67.1% of respondents say they spent less than R$1,250 in the last year on gaming equipment, well below, for example, the approximately R$2,300 needed to purchase an Xbox Series S , cheapest console of this new generation.

“What there is is a perception of game consumers of the economic scenario in the country and, from there, the choice of how to spend money on games or equipment becomes much more selective”, says Silva.

Check out other curious numbers from the survey:

• 74.5% of Brazilians claimed to have the habit of playing video games, an increase of 2.5 percentage points compared to the 2021 survey

• 81.2% of gamers have heard of eSports, up 32.8 percentage points from the last survey

• Just under half of the players (49.2%) say they know what NFT is

• Only 6.7% of gamers say they don’t play online games

• Women are the majority (60.4%) among gamers who prefer to play on mobile

• 70.7% of gamers who prefer to play on smartphones consider themselves casual gamers

• Among console gamers, 43.9% buy games on online platforms

• 45.4% of gamers listen to music while playing

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Grand Mountain Adventure
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Mobile games often have a bad reputation for having bad graphics and being full of advertisements. “Grand Mountain Adventure” (available for Android and iOS) does not confirm this thesis. The title from Swedish studio Toppluva is an open world ski/snowboard game, full of missions and tracks that takes the maxim “easy to play, hard to master” to the extreme. The free version gives you access to the first mountain of the game, which is enough for hours and hours of fun

update

news, launches, business and what else matters

• The Brazilian studio Aquiris, responsible for games like “Horizon Chase” and “Wonderbox”, announced that it will receive investment from the American giant Epic Games. “It’s a great confirmation of what Aquiris has built so far, and we can’t wait to show the world what we’re working on together,” said Mauricio Longoni, CEO of the Porto Alegre studio, in a statement. The values ​​of the deal were not disclosed.

• Epic Games announced that Sony, which owns the PlayStation brand, and Lego have each made a $1 billion investment for the company to “advance its vision to build the metaverse and support its continued growth”.

• While the competition bets on the construction of virtual spaces, Nintendo invests in real estate. The Japanese company announced the purchase of a 10,000 square meter plot of land in Kyoto for US$ 39.8 million (R$ 187 million) for the construction of a new building for its research and development team.

• Niantic, the developer of “Pokémon GO”, has announced that it is producing a new mobile game. In “Peridot” players will be able to have unique virtual pets, created by procedural generation, and use augmented reality technology to interact with them. According to the company, the title will soon enter the testing phase.

• Microsoft announced that Brazilian Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now play streaming games on the company’s consoles. The function, previously only available on PCs, allows you to access games directly from the cloud, without the need to download the title, and allows games from the new generation of consoles to be played on Xbox One.

• Three people have been arrested in London for operating an unofficial version of “Club Penguin”, reports the BBC. The game, a kind of social network for children very popular launched in 2005 by Disney, stopped working in 2017. Since then, the company has tried in court to prevent the creation of “clones” of the game.

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• “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”: BRL 101.95 (Switch)

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Promotion of the week

• More than 1,000 PC games are on sale at the Nuuvem online store, with discounts of up to 95%. Among the highlights are “Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition” for BRL 7.50 (94% off), “Deathloop” for BRL 119.99 (-51%) and “Outer Wilds” for BRL 24.99 (-47%).

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