In recent years we have seen a huge boom in the mobile gaming industry with the introduction of smartphones. Games played on a phone are no longer simple and just puzzle games but full, immersive, and graphically impressive that are very similar to games on dedicated devices such as the PSP or Nintendo DS. According to a new report from the researchers at Interpret, users are abandoning their dedicated systems for gaming on smartphones.

The report, “The Phone Gaming Revolution: Do the DS and PSP Stand a Chance?,” found that 43.8% of the phone/DS/PSP gaming market plays games on phones, which represents a significant 53.2% increase over the past year. At the same time, Interpret says that the proportion of those who play on the DS or PSP has fallen by 13%.

This is not surprising at all. As phones are getting more and more powerful, the need to carry around a second device is becoming less and less. And with smartphone offering up new ways to enhance gaming (multi-touch, accelerometer, gyroscopes), they are quickly becoming the preferred option.

Now Sony seems to be aware of this. Moving away from disc usage in their PSP Go, they are expected to bring the gaming experience to the PlayStation Phone that should be coming in March of next year. The future of dedicated mobile device gaming is an unclear one and although we don’t expect it to go away anytime soon, we will definitely continue to see a decline.

[Via IndustryGamers]