That's true for Southeast Asia, which is a pretty big gaming market as well. They essentially skipped PC gaming and went straight to smartphones. For the wealt

That's true for Southeast Asia, which is a pretty big gaming market as well. They essentially skipped PC gaming and went straight to smartphones. For the wealthier East Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea this isn't the case. It's more of a cultural thing due to various factors including - Smartphones and mobile games became popular long before they became popular in the US. People are used to paying money for mobile games. It was this way from the very start. - The Gacha model was popular in Japan even before mobile games. That's where the word comes from. Korea had similar machines. - People take public transportation much more than in the US, which leads itself to playing games on the go (mobile). - At least in Japan (less so in China and even less so in Korea), people prefer non-competitive gaming. That's why competitive games like DoTA, LoL, Counter Strike, etc, were never popular in Japan. Even Diablo with PVP never was popular.