While many "hardcore" gamers who play on consoles or PC often laugh off mobile gaming and consider it less valid, the truth is that it's a part of the industry that isn't going away anytime soon. In fact, according to Newzoo, 59% of the $180 billion in revenue that the gaming industry brought in over the course of 2021 came from mobile games. That's a staggering amount of money for just one platform, and it puts into perspective just how big mobile gaming is.

Compared to the hundreds of millions of gamers who use consoles like the Xbox Series X|S or the PS5, there are billions of people who play mobile games globally. And between the widespread availability and abundance of smartphones and the fact that most games on mobile are free to play with microtransactions, it's easy to see why; it's the most accessible way to play games by an immeasurably wide margin.

It's an extremely lucrative market, but Microsoft has struggled to succeed in it for a variety of different reasons. That's where mobile game developer and publisher King, as well as its parent company Activision, come in.

Microsoft is getting much-needed help