Take a look at the graphic. It tells that social gaming is affecting almost everyone on internet. The old way of subscription gaming is only a 20th. in size. This trend is favorizing iOS more than any other. A post at mashable.com has the whole story. Here is a part:
Since taking off in 2009, the social gaming phenomenon has drawn hundreds of millions of players, but it has also found more than its fair share of critics. Many claim that social games are too shallow and simplistic to attract a sustainable audience, while others assert that a free-to-play business model leaves too much money on the table to support the development of social games that compare favorably to traditional games. Some believe that the biggest threat to social games is the force that gave life to them in the first place -- the fate of the industry seems inextricably linked to the ebb and flow of the Facebook platform, and Facebook’s wavering commitment to developers does little to inspire confidence.All this has led social gaming’s biggest critics to suggest that social games are a flash in the pan that will eventually be subsumed into the rest of the online game industry. But social games are far more than a fleeting fad or a watered down version of “real” games. Just as social distribution has led to new forms of written media (i.e. the tweet) and new forms of video media (i.e. YouTubevideo), it has led to a disruptive form of gaming that plays an essential role in the way that people engage with the web.Social gaming is here to stay, and it’s here to stay for two fundamental reasons:
1.) The format of social games is a perfect match to the daily pattern and rhythm of how people use the social web, and
2.) Social games are the only form of interactive entertainment that are natively woven into and distributed via social networks -- the Internet’s new gateway.
