Android and iOS Gaming Now Worth More Than Sony and Nintendo’s Portable Divisions Combined

Just read that title again. Perhaps a third time. Ready? Let us continue.

According to new research by Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, both Sony and Nintendo’s battle to own the portable gaming market may well be over sooner rather than later, and the winner might not be either of the two gaming behemoths.

See, Flurry believes that the combined pair will generate $1.4 billion in gaming revenue for the year 2011. While that’s not a number to be sneezed at, it is considerably lower than the last two years. It’s also lower than the revenue Flurry expects the real competition to generate, with iOS and Android gaming combined expected to rake in $1.9 billion…

If Flurry has got their numbers right, and we don’t see why they wouldn’t have, then the traditional gaming companies will see their 2011 gaming revenue eclipsed by that of two smartphone and tablet platforms. That is something that would have been unheard of two short years ago, before the iPad and iPhone became gaming powerhouses.

The debate will rage on as to whether Sony and Nintendo have gone horribly wrong, or whether iOS and Android have pulled a metaphorical rabbit out of the hat somewhere along the line, but the end result is definitely the same – developers will need to take smartphone and tablet gaming very, very seriously moving forward.

Nintendo recently refused to allow its big franchise games to be ported to iOS or Android, with Mario Kart and Zelda both seemingly ripe for tablet outings. Nintendo, however, isn’t so keen.

Interestingly, many of Nintendo’s partners have been more forward thinking, with some hugely successful franchises making the jump away from Nintendo’s DS systems – Professor Layton being one of them.

Sony, for its part, has a new portable games console on the horizon called the Vita, and will be hoping that they can redress the balance with some good old computing horsepower. A high price may put buyers off, but PS3-level graphics may yet draw them in.

That said, we don’t know what is going to be powering the iPad 3 yet, do we?