A phone maker builds a handheld console and misreads the market
Nokia put the N-Gage on sale on October 7, 2003: a mobile phone shaped like a game handheld, with cartridges and online play. It sold poorly and was withdrawn within a few years.
Platform · 10 entries · 2003 to 2021
The game machine that was already in your pocket
Phones became the largest gaming platform in the world almost by accident. Nobody bought one in order to play games, which turned out to be exactly why the audience grew so far past the people who already considered themselves players.
Games ran on phones for years before anyone treated it as an industry, in tiny monochrome forms bundled by handset makers or downloaded over slow networks. Nokia's N-Gage in 2003 tried the direct approach, building a phone shaped like a handheld console with cartridges and online play, and it failed on ergonomics and library. The idea was not wrong, only early. What was missing was a screen worth playing on and a way to get software onto the device without a carrier standing in the middle.
The iPhone supplied the first in 2007 and the App Store supplied the second the following year. Direct global distribution with payment handled automatically meant a team of two could reach as many people as a large publisher. Prices fell to a dollar and then to nothing at all, with revenue moving to purchases made inside the game. Within a few years that model produced the largest revenue segment in the business, along with a set of design and monetization debates that have never been settled.
Mobile gaming also reached places consoles never had, in markets where a phone is the only computer a household owns. Entries here cover the platform shifts, the landmark releases, the arrival of location-based play in public streets, and later attempts to offer subscriptions as an alternative to selling items inside the game. It is the part of the archive where the audience is largest and the historical record is thinnest, because so much of it lived in storefronts that change without notice.
Entries in chronological order
10 entries filed under mobile devices. Expand any of them for the key facts, or open an entry for the full record and its sources.
2000-2009 The 2000s
Apple's phone quietly becomes the most common game machine
Apple's first iPhone went on sale in the United States on June 29, 2007. It had no game store and few games, yet it created the device category that would carry the largest gaming audience in the world.
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An app store rewires the economics of making games
Apple's App Store opened on July 10, 2008, giving any developer a route to a global audience with payment handled automatically. Games dominated it almost immediately, at prices the industry had never contemplated.
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Angry Birds turns casual mobile play into a household habit
Angry Birds reached Apple devices in December 2009. Rovio's simple physics puzzles, sold at a low price with an instantly recognizable cast, became the reference point for what a mobile hit looked like.
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2010-2019 The 2010s
Minecraft is declared finished and keeps expanding anyway
Two years of paid public development ended with a version numbered as complete, announced on stage at a gathering of players. Updates never actually stopped, and ports carried the game onto nearly every screen.
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Nintendo agrees to bring its characters to smartphones
After years of refusing to license its characters to phones, Nintendo announced a development partnership with DeNA. The last major holdout had accepted smartphones as a legitimate place for its franchises.
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Pokemon GO moves augmented reality into public streets
Niantic and The Pokemon Company placed collectible creatures at real map coordinates, so playing required walking outdoors. Crowds formed in parks and public squares worldwide within days of release.
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Fortnite makes free battle royale a social space
Epic Games added a free battle royale mode to an existing survival game, then layered on building, cross-platform play and cosmetic purchases. In-game concerts and events turned it into a hangout for young players.
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A monthly subscription bundle arrives for mobile games
Apple opened a curated subscription library of games with no advertising and no in-app purchases, playable across its devices for a flat monthly fee. Developers gained an alternative to free-to-play economics.
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2020-2029 The 2020s
A platform built from users' own games reaches the stock market
Roblox went public through a direct listing at a valuation in the tens of billions. Its catalogue consists of games made by its own users, many of them young, which raised questions about creators, moderation and revenue sharing.