Chart of the Week: Mobile to be largest game segment by 2017

If we could predict the future, we'd all be rich from lottery tickets, right?

For that reason, I'm very skeptical about market predictions, especially when it comes to something like games.

Who predicted the impact of iPhone or iPad, or the pancaking sales of Nokia, Sony Ericsson and RIM?

Rising columns

Still, this slide from Capcom's recent financials - sourced using data from International Development Group - has one significant conclusion.

Of course, it's not the numbers atop each column that gives an estimate for the size of total global games market in the years 2013 to 2017.

No, it's that in 2017, mobile games is predicted to be the largest gaming sector.

The precise figures are $29.6 billion from mobile games to $29.0 billion from PC online. 

Whether this happens in 2017 or not, depends on many things, but one trend is clear: mobile is the fastest growing segment.