Mobile gaming has evolved a lot in the last couple years. It used to be something for real gamers to stick their noses up at, but times are changing.

With phones getting better and more powerful each year, the types of games that can be played on them have gotten exponentially better. It isn’t all Candy Crush and Clash of Clans these days.

The growing popularity of mobile gaming is inevitable.  If you need evidence for that, just look at Nintendo. The 3DS is as popular as ever and people love the portability of the Switch, so obviously there’s a significant amount of people who want to play games on the go. But there is a difference between wanting to play games on the go and wanting to play games on your phone.

The thing is, that difference is quickly shrinking.

Apple just showed off the new IPhone 8 and IPhone X and a whole section of their press conference was dedicated to mobile gaming. With incredible screens and lightning fast processors, phones are slowly morphing into the perfect gaming machines. It’s only a matter of time before you can use your Xbox controller to play the next Elder Scrolls game on your phone.

As it is, games like Injustice 2 are already getting lesser releases on mobile alongside their console counterparts. The big question is, do gamers care?

The answer is, if they don’t, they should.

Nvidia and other peripheral manufactures already have controllers that can be used for Android and mobile gaming. The early technology is there and it’s advancing at breakneck speeds.

Mobile gaming is a huge source of revenue for the gaming industry and it’s slowly but surely helping to shape its future. Take microtransactions for example. They are how free-to-play mobile games made their money in the beginning. Now, they’re everywhere you look in the gaming industry.

There’s little doubt that eventually, mobile gaming will be awesome. When you can play the full version of Dark Souls 5 or Madden 2028 on your IPhone XX, gamers might finally accept mobile gaming as a viable alternative to PC and Console gaming. That time is still quite a ways  off, but it’s all but inevitable. Until then, just know that mobile gaming is setting precedents, both good and bad, for the gaming industry.