iOS To Be The Biggest Gaming Platform Ever By The End of 2012

If you like video games you'd better also start liking touchscreen controls. If current trends continue by the end of this year there will be 200 million gamers on iOS, more than on any other gaming platform in the history of the medium.
And that has more implications than just having even more casual games around.
First the numbers. Tech blog Asymco broke out the data and found that currently the iOS platform has a rising number of gamers. They based this on two factors: OpenFeint accounts and Game Center accounts. Game Center accounts nearly doubled between September 2011 and June 2012 to 130 million, and OpenFeint accounts stood at 180 million before the company was acquired.
For a little contrast the best selling console of all time, the PlayStation 2, has moved 153 million units. Apple's on track to eclipse that by the time Halloween rolls around.
To be fair, it's pretty easy to turn around and point out that iOS users don't care that much about gaming: 130 million Game Center accounts means about a third of iOS users have bothered to set one up. And it doesn't translate out to heavy game sales: games supported by advertisting or free-to-play models are very prevalent on iOS after all.
On the other hand we've also seen repeatedly this quarter that companies like Sega and Capcom are doing better in the mobile space than on consoles. And the more users they see in that space the less tempting consoles may become.

Of course it's doing better. Parents would rather buy their kids iPod touches for $200 and have them only play $1 and $2 games on it than buy them a $200-$300 playstation/xbox/wii and then have to pay for $60 games. [pic] i got three little cousins they like 9 and 10 years old and their moms bought em all ipod touches. that's all they play with now.