At present, game developers are more willing to develop apps for smartphones and tablets, compare to the desktop PCs. According to a recent survey from the Game Developer Conference, which is based on the polling of more than 2,500 North American developers, 55% of respondents are currently developing their games for mobile platform, 58% are planning to develop their next games on mobile devices.
However, developers are still willing to develop games for PCs and Macs as well; 34.6% of developers have just released a game for PC/Mac, while 48% are currently developing games for the platform, and 49% are planning their next games for the platform. In addition, developers are less willing to develop traditional games–among them, Nintendo faring the worst.
More importantly, 13.2% of developers are currently developing Microsoft’s Xbox 360 games, while 14% are planning to develop their next games for the Microsoft gaming console. However, Sony’s PlayStation 3 comes next to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 games; 13% of developers are currently building games for Sony’s gaming console, while 11% are targeting their next games.  Besides, 11% of respondents are planning to develop PlayStation as well as Xbox 360 games.  In the contrary, just 4.6% of developers are currently working on Nintendo’s Wii U games.
Apparently, developers’ interest towards portable handheld development is little discouraging. As per survey report, just 2% of respondents have made their last game for Sony’s struggling PS Vista portable. Nevertheless, a little more (4.2% of respondents) is currently developing their games for it. Interestingly, over 5% have already planned their next game for the platform. Furthermore, 2% of respondents are currently working on Nintendo’s 3DS games, whereas 2.8% are planning to release their next games on the portable console.
Breaking out some facts, the survey report also shows off developers’ interest to develop games PC-based TV consoles, along with smartphones and tablets. Also, developers are likely to develop games for the next generation gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft, but the gaming console Nintendo’s Wii U still needs to warm up these developers for working on it.
In fact, 53% of developers were identified in the survey as “indie developers”, while 46% of respondents were working in companies of 10 employees or fewer. However, developers, those are targeting to mobile device, typically require much less resources and funding to develop gaming apps, compare to those who are targeting to bigger screen device games. 35% of developers are currently financing their games from their personal funds, while only 10% are primarily being funded by publishers.
