About one third of all Americans own a smartphone. Roughly 64% of all smartphone users play games on their mobile devices. That means about 64 million Americans are playing video games on their iPhone, Droid or Blackberry. “Serious” gamers may continue to turn up their noses and scoff at the “casual” gamers who limit their game time to a couple hours of Angry Birds every week, but those numbers don’t lie. Thanks to smartphones, video games have reached a whole new audience and are now more popular than ever. Are X-Box’s and PlayStations going away any time soon? Nah, but mobile gaming is here to stay. The big question is what it will look like in the coming years.

Right now, most mobile games are simple in design and execution. You can only do so much with a touchscreen and many gamers who like to game on the go have already invested in a Nintendo 3DS. For someone who only plays games while on a work break or waiting for a bus or sitting on the toilet, mobile gaming is cheap and easy. However, the technology used to create mobile games is getting better. Graphics are improving. Gameplay is getting deeper and more complex. Id Software (the company behind the Doom series) co-founder John Carmack says that mobile devices will “almost certainly” be as powerful as home consoles within two years.

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