iGaming Business magazine iGB 112 Sept/Oct 2018 | Page 22

Casino & Games
MOBILE
vs.
DESKTOP
Some games perform better and rank higher on mobile than desktop.
iGaming Tracker’s Ken Muir digs into the factors driving this
With more than 17 years’ experience in the
gambling and sports industries, Ken Muir
founded iGaming Tracker, which provides
market intelligence services for the igaming
industry, in 2015. Previously, he was at
Perform Group as commercial director
(direct to consumer sites) and Sky Betting &
Gaming in various roles, including head
of CRM and head of business strategy.
Mobile’s emergence as the main platform for online casino content
poses several challenges to both casino operators and casino games
suppliers. Some of these are similar to those that come with desktop
content, but some are unique to mobile games. These include:
• Casino games on mobile use HTML5, so legacy games developed
on Flash need to be converted to HTML5.
• As the word ‘mobile’ suggests, customers use their devices in a
variety of locations. Consequently, bandwidth will be more variable
on mobile, meaning the file size of a game is more important.
• Related to the file size is the reliability of the service of games –
do game launches work properly?
• The type of game that is popular ‘on the move’ using a phone is
sometimes different to the type of game popular on desktop.
• For casino operators the design of the page is critical. For instance,
fewer game thumbnails being shown on the mobile screen means
potentially less choice.
Game rankings
We tracked more than 40 casino pages in the UK on both a
desktop and mobile browser. In some cases, the web page URL
is identical, in other cases the mobile version is a specific mobile
URL. We tracked the top 20 positions of each page every day
during the month of June (see Figure 1).
The rankings are based on the aggregated days the games
are present in the positions.
Games that seem to over-index on mobile browsers include
Blueprint games such as Fishin’ Frenzy and Genie Jackpots.
NetEnt games such as Guns N’ Roses and Asgardian Stones
Figure 1: Game ranking comparisons (June 2018) – mobile vs. desktop
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iGamingBusiness | Issue 112 | September/October 2018