The past few years have seen several significant trends in the gaming industry. Free-to-play, digital distribution, and mobile gaming have all been major factors in the growth of games, both in terms of the number of titles released and the industry’s revenue. In particular, the rise of free-to-play has been one of the most significant developments in the industry. It has made gaming more accessible to a broader audience while also giving gamers the ability to try out a wide range of titles for free. But what else is on the horizon?
More PC Gaming Platforms
Steam has been the dominant player for selling PC games online that are then downloaded directly to your computer. Steam is a platform that allows users to communicate with a wide range of users, including friends, acquaintances, streamers, and more. The service also allows developers to create and sell their games and apps and communicate with users. Despite having a great time playing it on your own custom rigs with all the mouse pads that have fun designs and RGB lighting you have invested in setting up your gaming PC, Steam has had somewhat of a stranglehold on the community. Nevertheless, there have been a few new incumbents who are changing the industry. Epic, of Apple lawsuit and Fortnite fame, have begun to offer huge discounts on some AAA games and even some of the newer releases. While Steam remains strong, it is always nice to have options when choosing your games.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is the future of gaming, and you can get there today. Virtual reality, or VR, is the immersive, interactive digital environment that recreates the physical world on your screen. VR works by immersing a user into a computer-generated world where they interact with digital characters and objects. VR gaming is a rapidly growing area of the industry. Its ever-improving and growing technology means that it has the potential to entertain, amaze, and educate. VR is the framework within which virtual worlds are designed, developed, and managed. It allows for a user to interact with a virtual world as if it were physically real. For example, you might have already seen videos of Beat Saber online, a game where the player dons a VR headset and swings wildly to hit colored tiles to the beat of some music. That specific game went viral, but there are many others, and they are getting more advanced with each iteration.
Cloud Gaming
Cloud gaming is a new frontier in the world of technology, and it’s one you should be paying attention to if you’re into streaming games to your mobile device. When cloud gaming first came out, it was all about storing files in the cloud for other devices to access. These days, cloud gaming is taking the world by storm and makes game streaming more accessible for users. It is a term that describes the delivery of games from a centralized server rather than the standard delivery on a local computer. This is done for various reasons, but the most important is that it allows the players to play games without downloading them. This feature lowers the hardware requirements of the player and will enable them to play on a wide range of devices. While the technology isn’t quite there in terms of latency (there is too much lag at the moment), it is only a matter of time before it becomes mainstream.
Mobile Gaming
Mobile gaming is growing exponentially, with developers and publishers realizing that the market is endless. Mobile games can be casual games designed for short play sessions, or they can be more interactive and complex games that require a user to invest more time in the game. Smartphones have become so powerful that they can rival some lower-powered laptops. With this boost in power have come massive amounts of gamers taking advantage.
Furthermore, dedicated gaming phones utilize extensive vapor chamber cooling and physical fans to keep the chipset cool. Developers take advantage of the enormous audience and create some truly unique titles that take advantage of these devices. One interesting example in the past few years has been Pokémon Go. This used people’s phones to look into the real world and search for Pokémon. China seems to be leading the charge in the mobile industry, where rapid growth has taken the world by storm. If you want to see how mobile gaming will develop, you should look to China.
Gaming is a vast market and growing every day. In many ways, it fuels the tech industry because gamers demand the very best products. There is no doubt that mobile gaming and more options for purchasing and playing games are the hottest trends in the industry.