Introduction
The gaming industry has grown far from its early stages. There was a time when very few ventured to make their career or experience what it has to offer in terms of its services and products. In this article, we will be looking at trends in gaming industry that are shaping the ecosystem of the online world.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- What are Current Trends in Gaming Industry?
- Let’s see the timeline of the gaming industry growth.
- Table to showcase major trends in Gaming Industry:
- Let’s see now major fields which are going to dominate the near future trends in gaming industry:
- Conclusion:
What are Current Trends in Gaming Industry?
When you think of the gaming industry first thought most of us have is of the Super Mario 16-bit game which ruled the world by storm. In the early years of gaming simple games like Mario, Contra, and Prince were the mainstream games. Most of us must have played or heard about it. Either from our friends or from our parents about these games who played in their youth times.
Now gaming industry has completely revolutionized from those early days of its history. With the advent of modern computing power in small processors which comes inside new gaming consoles. It has completely evolved the gaming industry into a form that most of us would not even dream of. This has led games to leap forward from what they were even 10-12 years back. Also, blockchain technology evolving and gaining acceptance in the mainstem with time. This will’s also making inroads in the more modern development of the gaming industry.
Let’s see the timeline of the gaming industry growth.
Table to showcase major trends in Gaming Industry:
| Gaming Trend | Stage of Growth | Target Segment | Mode of Distribution | Revenue Model |
| Console Gaming | High | Traditional Gamers: Kids/Adults | Consoles/Games Cds/Virtual keys | Hardware for Console/Games |
| Cloud Gaming | Medium | Traditional Gamers open to new technology | Subscription: Monthly/Yearly Pass | Hybrid: one-time sale of a game or recurring subscription |
| Mobile Gaming | High | New Generation/ Traditional Gamers alike | Play Store: Android/IOS/ Apps | In-app purchase/one-time purchase |
| E-Sport | Low | New Generation especially Gen Y or Z | Official Leagues/Game Events | Sponsorship/ Media Rights/ Team Leagues |
| Virtual Gaming | Low | People open to new tech with deep pockets | Subscription | Gaming consoles like headsets/VR controller |
| Metaverse | Low | Tech friendly Audience | Blockchain-based not fully developed | In-game play purchase |
| NFT & Blockchain | Low | High Skilled Tech-enabled individuals | Blockchain/Opensource Algorithms | NFT tokens/Crypto Assets |
The Gaming industry is growing by huge numbers every year at present in 2022 its around 90 billion which is forecasted to grow to 315 billion according to the Mordor research firm. This has led to huge investment in this field by major corporations be it traditional gaming giants like EA Sports, Activision, or for that matter traditional players like Google with its Stadia platform or Facebook with its Metaverse.
Let’s see now major fields which are going to dominate the near future trends in gaming industry:
Console Gaming:
The oldest form of consuming virtual games is through video game consoles. We all would be aware of Nintendo, Sony PlayStation, and Xbox consoles and most of us have played on either of these market leaders’ consoles. Games were traditionally developed keeping the hardware in contention thus experience on these consoles is usually not high-end in terms of performance and experience be it visual, audio or role-playing.
Even though this is a handicap for the gaming industry, traditional console gaming still contributes a significant chunk of revenue in the gaming industry. Thus, Sony or Microsoft still spend millions of dollars developing high-end gaming consoles like PS5 or Xbox Series X. Also every major game developing studio or corporation has in their portfolio games for traditional consoles because this is the bread and butter of the gaming industry.
Cloud Gaming:
From the early ’80s most of us have become used to off-buying video games which also played a role in setting trends in gaming industry. These include handheld consoles, tv game consoles, or PCs for playing most games that were on offer at shopping stores.
This process has inherent drawbacks as with the evolution of technology at a fast pace. Games were developed with more graphic, video, and audio content which involved the upgradation of devices to stream and enjoy them.
Thus, it became a trend for most of us to upgrade consoles or hand-held devices in 5-7 years. It involved cost for power-hungry high-performance hardware. And many were unable to do it and thus missed out on the latest games.
Thus modern gaming giants thought to bridge this gap. As their end products modern games were not selling as most were not able to stream on their current devices. This led to the development of systems with high computational power through supercomputers. Basically, they were large sets of high-performance CPUs coupled together in parallel with matching terabytes of RAM. Also supported with gigabytes of pcle’s SSD’s based hard disks. These systems then had modern games installed on them. This led to cloud computing for games.
With Cloud gaming taking traction in a market gone was the need to continuously upgrade our hardware systems. One just needs a monthly subscription to these platforms and can play games on their existing smart tv’s equipped with a high-speed broadband connection.
Most of the big players like Microsoft, Sony, Google, Amazon, Tencent, etc are offering these services or are in the process of doing so.
Mobile Gaming:
The adoption of 4G in most countries in the world has led to mobile devices with high-speed internet connections. Most modern mobile phones come with high-performance chipsets coupled with sufficient RAM and storage space. This, in turn, led to the development of mobile-based games which users can play on their phones. Either on their way to work or in their free time without worrying about getting traditional hardware like gaming consoles.
Though the experience of gaming is not at par with most modern gaming consoles like PS5 or Xbox Series X. But it’s sufficient for most of us. This rapid growth of the mobile gaming trend has led major corporations to produce special games or light versions of their best sellers.
And able to cater to this growing market and earn more profit. An estimate for 2021 is that only mobile gaming contributes around 45% globally. That is around 90plus billion USD as a whole in the gaming industry market.
With the advent of 5G technology which is still in its nascent state. It is going to drive further growth in mobile gaming. A speed of 100mbs for downloading and uploading which will be the norm in 5 G-supported devices will allow online mobile gaming to grow to greater heights.
The future knows where this growth will go at present. As it all depends on how soon most countries shift to 5 G systems. The biggest challenge will be how big a segment of mobile phone users smartphones especially will upgrade from 4G devices to 5G devices. This is an obstacle like traditional gaming console industry has seen in the past.
E-Sports:
Another new stream of gaming that has developed in the last 6-7 years is E-sport. It involves traditional forms like sports leagues, sponsorship, media rights, and official medals/trophies in video gaming. Many countries have started their own E-sport league where teams made of many video game players play together in either RPG(role play game style) or strategy-based games to beat each other out. Nations like Japan, China, Korea, and Sweden for that matter have started their own E-leagues with huge prize money to be won by teams. Also, Norway as a nation has officially recognized E-sport as a form of sports and started delivering study courses in their university in this field.
According to Forbes magazine, E-sports has grown to 2 billion USD in revenue in 2022. And it had a global viewership of around 73 million people who either went to the sports arena to watch the league live or viewed it on television/live stream.
Also, acceptance of E-sports by the masses is the biggest validator of it. E-sport will make official entry into Asian Games 2022 with 8 games in the category of E-sport will be played. Many nations will send their teams to participate in this category and teams from Korea, Japan will most likely going to dominate this category.
Virtual Gaming:
VR/AR (virtual reality or augmented reality) is the most immersive form of gaming that the world has seen. Through virtual reality, users are able to experience and feel the game more holistically which enables them to take part as a player in the virtual world. VR gaming is traditionally played through VR headsets and hand controllers which users wear to play VR games and sets the latest trends in gaming industry and games consoles.
Most games in VR have made inroads in the mainstream with the help of companies like Oculus which were early adopters of this form of gaming hardware. VR games give users the freedom to leave out the real world enter the world of artificial reality and enjoy the game.
Popular gaming franchisee like Grand Theft Auto, and Doom has started to offer their games through VR to enhance user experiences. With the falling price of the hardware in the future, the market share for VR gaming would increase from its present share of around 7-8 billion USD in the 2021 gaming industry.
Augment Reality is yet to make its space in the gaming world. Apart from the success of Pokemon Go around 5-6 years ago hardly any game in AR has made inroads in the mainstream gaming world.
Metaverse:
Companies like Facebook and Microsoft have decided to develop their own blockchain-based virtual world. Here users can not only experience virtual reality but also take part in it. As they would do it in the real world. This form of gaming will not only involve traditional gaming but will also have a mixture where users can play different roles. While playing games can take part in doing their normal life routines example going shopping, attending a music concert,s or going to a restaurant for dinner or a date all in the virtual world during their gameplay.
Though many traditional gamers will like to go to their console and play games and when bored switch it off. There would be a segment of the audience who will want to experience the whole virtual world. Be it interacting with the fellow gamer on coffee at a restaurant, or attending parties or funerals all in the virtual world.
It looks unreal at present as to how a large section of the gaming world will adopt this trend. Still, blockchain-based technology is not mature enough to crave out all its edges and perform optimally.
NFT & Blockchain:
his is the newest arm of the gaming industry being developed. With Non-Fungible Token based on blockchain algorithms creating a buzz in the tech world.
The gaming industry took notice of this trend. Many gaming giants like Ubisoft and Square Enix who were working on Metaverse saw this opportunity to create NFT tokens. Also, cryptocurrency like (Gala or Sandbox Ethereum blockchain) is based on these gaming platforms. Users of these platforms can use the NFT or cryptocurrency to exchange their roles or get rewards or advantages in their gameplay.
This is at present more a fad as still metaverse itself has not proven successful in making users adopt it. Then finding opportunities through NFTs & Blockchain in this form of gaming is a long road to be traveled.
As the use of cryptocurrency will evolve in the future and be adopted mainstream, early adopters of NFTs based on blockchain algorithms game assets will be able to cash them out in the gaming industry when it matures in the future. Another online game which is ruling the world of math enthusiasts then we can miss to mention Nerdle Math Puzzle game.
Conclusion:
As we have seen gaming industry has come way forward from its early stages almost 4 decades back to modern gaming. What we see today trends in the gaming industry is going to keep evolving with advancement in technology. This will involve improvement in hardware, blockchain algorithms, and ecosystems of games.
We will see huge opportunities not only for creators in this space but also for end users to enjoy and make a living out of it. Nowadays gaming is not associated with enjoyment but it has become an integral part of many of us whose livelihood revolves around it.
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