eSports have emerged as a huge phenomenon over the past few years, with tournaments getting attention through both live attendance and online via Twitch and other streaming services. Some believe that the popularity is only reserved for PC titles like Dota 2 and League of Legends. New research contends that isn’t the case.

iResearchChina has reported that mobile devices could play a huge part in eSports for years to come, and they could have a presence as big as that on PC. The site explains that mobile eSports have “large coverage, simple operation, weak real-time confrontation and low threshold” – some traits opposite with traditional eSports, which has “small coverage, difficult operation, fierce confrontation and cooperation.”

eSports will develop in two ways, according to the site. “One way is to take national brand-new ‘micro eSports’ route by advantage of its popularity and low threshold; the other is that it learns from PC games, then becomes the competitive mobile games with higher requirement for operation. In this way, it can make up the shortage of visual appreciation and turn into the professional game via building the professional player team.

“Under such circumstances, mobile eSports can increase gamers’ attention and participation, and make game manufacturers, sponsors, publishers and platforms join this industry chain. Compared with traditional PC eSports born in (the) 1990’s, the mature process of mobile eSports greatly shortens. It is predicted that its first round of explosive development will come in 2015.”

A recent survey on China’s eSports game participants taken earlier this year indicates that only 56.6 percent of those surveyed would consider taking part in some form of mobile-based competition, while 13.3 percent indicated no interest in it. Meanwhile, 42.3 percent of those polled indicated they would watch these tournaments, depending on the game involved.

A big difference with mobile-based eSports, according to the site, is that almost anyone can participate, thanks to the low requirements for operation and low threshold for participation. “Diversified designs and great rewards don’t only enable users to experience eSports, but also make them enjoy it,” said the site. “Moreover, winners can finally receive fame and fortune at the same time.”

In terms of higher marketing costs for games, an eSports competition would also provide “effective propaganda” for certain titles, “appealing to more and more manufacturers to join it.”

It’s still early, though, with room to “improve competition design and enhance propaganda and normalization. Meanwhile, brand image also needs to be built up and maintained between users, more and more manufacturers can join in, its influence can be expanded as well, and that’s the way to set up a national brand-new entertainment competition, which is different from traditional eSports competition,” says the article.

Since more first-person shooters and MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games are emerging on the mobile market, it’s certainly ripe for competition – now it’s just a matter of acceptance. “iResearch believes that two-way development of national micro eSports and professionalized competition will promote mobile eSports to realize explosive development in 2015. Moreover, property of mobile eSports will become the new engine for mobile game industry,” concludes the article.

It’ll be interesting to see where this leads, but could we be looking at some Clash of Clans or Game of War: Fire Age competitions Maybe.