2012 was supposed to be the year. The year when mobile gaming made its presence truly felt at Gamescom.

In the build-up, there was encouraging talk of there being a dedicated area, dubbed 'Mobile Games World'.

It was billed as a place where exhibitors could unite with a common purpose and showcase their wares under one roof, rather than be scattered around like usual.

Despite the unstoppable growth of the mobile sector, the Mobile Games World hasn't come to fruition. Instead, next week's showcase event will once again revert to type and focus on the usual suspects in the blockbuster space.

Budgets and belief

On a superficial level, it's easy to see why.

If you talk to publishers big and small in the industry, there's a general lack of belief in trying to push games on 'little' devices to the public at these big, noisy events.

The first issue is the perceived cost of the stand build, and whether that's the best way to spend your PR and marketing budget. When your game price is so low (or free, even), you have to be hugely confident that vast costs of designing and constructing the kind of eye-catching beast will make a difference to sales.

The other fly in the ointment is that these cavernous, cacophonous halls are second only to a rollercoaster as the the worst places to sample a mobile game for the first time.

There seems to be the perception that unless the game in question is being shown off on a screen the size of the Olympic Stadium flanked by dead-eyed dancing girls, you're probably going to struggle to get the required eyeballs on your latest world-changing free-to-play goblin tower defence effort.

Plenty aspiring mobile players would like to be involved, but simply haven't got the money to throw around, or choose to spend it in other areas.

You can bet they will be in attendance, but carrying out their meetings within the business area on small booths, or just turning up at a meeting place, iPad in hand.

No mobile momentum

But even for the big, established game publishers with cash to burn, the appetite for showcasing their handheld, mobile and tablet titles seems to be limited, to say the least.

That the combined might of Activision, Warners, Capcom, Sega, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Konami, Tecmo Koei, Codemasters and Namco Bandai boast zero mobile titles and a small smattering of handheld efforts is a pretty pathetic effort, all told.

By contrast Square Enix has a whopping six iOS titles on show, including Final Fantasy Dimensions. Admittedly, it will doubtlessly be using the same lo-fi set-up it employed out at E3, with headphones to drown out the din and iPads attached to stands, but hey, at least it's bothering.

No-one's saying that publisher have to spend a lot of money. No-one's saying each game needs to go big or go home, and given the comparatively little effort required in providing such an area at the show, it's slightly exasperating that few publishers feel compelled take advantage of what is - quite obviously -one of the biggest gaming events in the world.

Even if we do accept that gigantic expos are generally a bit crap for showcasing handheld games, what's the alternative?

A matter of time

At the moment, it seems that most connected with the mobile space are still largely relying on tried and trusted methods to make their titles catch fire - namely price, an established brand if you're lucky, word of mouth, good relationships with the press and a fair degree of just pissing in the wind.

The thing is, we all know that the success rate of mobile titles is pretty appalling, so what better than, you know, to actually try and make sure people know about them ahead of time?

This current practice of removing any kind of event status around key mobile titles displays a curious lack of confidence in a sector that's more than capable of providing established companies with a serious boost to their bottom lines.

Another factor about the absence of mobile titles from Gamescom that's equally disappointing is that is yet again perpetuates the bizarre myth that mobile games aren't really 'proper' games.

For anyone who has devoured the ungodly number of wonderful handheld releases over the past few years, it's faintly embarrassing to see respected colleagues and industry types wrinkle their nose at the idea of mobile games providing the same degree of entertainment as 'real' games.

Titantic troubles

No-one's saying that these 'little' games are doing the same things as your 40 hour console and PC behemoths (although some do a fairly good job of trying), but the craft and creativity within the elite mobile titles deserves to be treated with the same level of respect.

For the industry at large to collectively decide to snub the most vibrant sector in gaming at the moment seems like a peculiar form of self sabotage.

Should we be surprised? Maybe not. But the longer the established industry continues to act like the violinist on the deck of the Titantic, the more they'll only have themselves to blame in a few years time when they're being bought up by acquisitive mobile companies looking for tasty IP.