Mobile games are insanely popular nowadays. They are so popular that in the past few years, they have overtaken consoles and PCs in terms of overall market revenue. Currently, they hold over 50% of the gaming industry’s $100+ billion market share.
A lot of this is thanks to the widespread adoption of high-end Android and iOS smartphones. These phones have shown that games on mobile can deliver amazing gaming experiences. They have allowed game developers the freedom to experiment with many types of games.
Although both the Android and iOS platforms have their own share of users, the way to truly capitalize on a mobile game would be to make it cross-platform. Releasing a game on both iOS and Android can bring a whole host of benefits to a team of developers.
Cross-platform game development means developing the same game for one or more platforms. This can happen in one of two ways: one, developers can develop for both platforms simultaneously. Or the game is usually developed in one platform first and then ported to the other one after it becomes a success in the former one.
The obvious benefit of this is the larger user base. Both Android and iOS, as said before, have large user bases of their own. If the game is released in both, then the developers will be able to tap into both the user bases simultaneously. This is especially beneficial as both the platforms are identical and little to no changes would be required when changing from one to the other.
The result of a huge user base would be a much larger revenue share. Because more users result in more revenue. Instead of releasing a second game within the same platform, developers could release the same game on a second platform.
And this is just what top game development companies do nowadays. Big game titles that are exclusive to either Android or iOS are rare nowadays. As soon as the game becomes a hit in one platform, the game developers make sure to port it to the other one.
Prominent examples of cross-platform games that have followed this path include Supercell’s Clash of Clans, Rovio’s Angry Birds, Imangi Studios’ Temple Run, and SYBO Games’ Subway Surfers. One of the reasons why all these games are household names among mobile games is because of their availability in both the Android and iOS platforms. This has resulted in these games being exposed to millions of smartphone users around the world.
Developing cross-platform games is easier now than ever before.
Developers can rely on one of the many game engines available today depending on the type of their game. There is Unity3D, which allows developers to create games with amazing 3D graphics. Then there is Cocos2d-X which is an excellent 2D game engine. There are others like unreal, Godot and Corona, which have fans of their own.
The most popular one, however, is Unity from Unity Technologies. It is behind nearly 50% of all games currently being released on mobile platforms.
The Unity game development helps develop and deploy an ultimate gaming experience for the gaming buffs by virtue of its interactive 3D game flow, intuitive tools, high quality assets, characters and through a complete set of 3D and 2D game design tools. Besides Android and iOS, Unity also supports development for other platforms including PC (Windows & Mac), console (Xbox, PS4, & Nintendo Switch), and other various platforms.
The primary benefit of using Unity as the game engine of choice is that just by creating and coding the game once, the game can be deployed on multiple platforms. This means that a developer just has to develop the game once. After that, the same game can be deployed on both Android and iOS platforms with little to no additional coding required.
The resulting game will be the same experience on both platforms. The developers will only have to make minor tweaks to optimize for the platforms if any at all.
All this and many other features make Unity the most popular choice among mobile game developers. Whether one is a novice developer or an experienced one, it allows developers to create mobile games for both Android and iOS platforms.
Conclusion
There are several benefits to developing a mobile game cross-platform. Chief among them being the increased number of users and the resulting increased revenue. And as mentioned, one of the best game engines for cross-platform mobile game development is the Unity game engine.
If you are looking to develop a cross-platform game of your own, however, the best way to do this would be with a top game development company like us. We are a game development company with a dedicated team of Unity developers. We build games for multiple platforms including Android and iOS.