The Drowning is going to get a lot of attention as a first-person shooter that was designed from the start for a touchscreen tablet. The 3D game from Japan’s DeNA studio in Stockholm breaks new ground because it has a new control scheme for a type of game that is usually best played with a console game controller or a keyboard and mouse.
Scattered Entertainment’s Ben Cousins, who’s working to bring a console-like first-person shooter experience to mobile with The Drowning.
The Drowning debuts today, and it will be a test as to whether gamers will really take to shooter games that are specifically tailored to tablets. If The Drowning succeeds, then iOS could expand the multibillion-dollar first-person shooter game market to a new beachhead in smartphones and tablets. And that could change the whole makeup of what is popular on mobile game platforms.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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