The gaming sector over the years changed with the rise of new tech innovations that had an impact on everything from game design and development to the type of audience interested in gaming. We’ve all witnessed the rise of new game consoles, modern VR headsets, AR games, mobile games, and new genres that expanded the target audience of the gaming sector and made gaming a global force.
Today there are over 3 billion gamers worldwide from all walks of life, and the global gaming sector is worth approximately $365.60 billion in 2023. Some tech innovations had little impact compared to technologies like the iPhone, VR technology, or Artificial Intelligence. Here we will focus only on the most influential technologies in the gaming market and how they redefined the gaming industry.
Mobile Gaming
Mobile gaming came into existence thanks to Nokia phones and games like Tetris and Snake. The games were very simple, the phones didn’t support graphics in color, and you could only play one or two mobile games on your device. But, soon enough, things changed with the development of the first iPhone, which disrupted the gaming market and had a snowball effect on other sectors as well.
The rise of internet-enabled smartphones and touch screens forever changed the face of mobile gaming. In just two decades, mobile gaming became one of the fastest growing industries, which eventually would account for over 50% of the gaming’s sectors revenue.
Thanks to the convenience offered by mobile devices, their portability, and the improved performance of smartphones in general, there was more room for improvement. When it comes to mobile games, they started to feature better graphics, and as an increasingly number of users had smartphones, there were even more opportunities to create new and innovative games which further expanded the demographics of the gaming sector.
As a result, today, the games cover loads of different categories starting from puzzles and idle games to action games and loads of other options by popular developers. In case you are interested in games of chance, you will be glad to know that mobile technology is equally important for online casino players. Hence, the rising number of mobile casino sites and apps.
The Best BNB Casinos are mobile-friendly and offer you full access to this entire gaming collection on the go as well as the available payment options, including cryptocurrencies.
AR and VR Technology
AR technology came to prominence with the rise of the popularity of Pokémon Go. The mobile game became a phenomenon that put AR gaming on the map. The main reason for its success is the integration of realistic 3D elements that are personalized to your space. You only need a smartphone or AR glasses if you are willing to go the extra mile to enjoy AR games.
VR technology accumulated even more success compared to AR technology. It provides a fully immersive gaming experience thanks to the modern VR headsets on the market. It wasn’t always like that, and in the early 200s, VR technology failed to launch in the way everyone expected as it was a novelty on the gaming market, promising something that no technological innovation was able to recreate.
But, at the time, the VR headsets and graphics weren’t able to create a realistic gaming experience necessary for the technology of that scale and gaming equipment, which is still on the pricey side even today.
The major difference for its success is that today there are realistic visuals that are able to create that immersive gaming experience, and the VR headset is quite innovative with the involvement of brands like Samsung, Meta, and Amazon.
The gaming library is still limited, but we expect that to change in the future since VR gaming has just become dominant in the gaming market. So, as VR headsets become more affordable, there will be more options for gamers to enjoy their favorite VR games.
Cryptocurrencies
Virtual currencies are one of the latest innovations in the gaming market. They entered the mainstream with the latest bull cycle of Bitcoin, and a lot more brick-and-mortar businesses, as well as online brands, decided to accept crypto payments.
There are many different advantages associated with crypto payments. Namely, their usage decreases the costs related to in-app purchases and other transactions on gaming sites. They offer enhanced security, lower processing fees, and anonymity to the users.
In the future, we expect crypto to become more ubiquitous in the gaming space since most gamers are quite advanced when it comes to new technological innovations, and a lot of them are willing to use their cryptocurrencies for gaming.
NFTs and Gaming
NFTs generated a lot of hype in 2021, and even though the hype has died down, there is a lot of potentials for NFTs to be used in gaming as well. NFTs are non-fungible tokens that are mainly used for the tokenization of digital artwork, video, music, and articles. Their influence changes the relationship between the artists and their audiences by providing a direct link for them to support the artists and become virtual owners of their artwork.
Because NFTs can be technically designed for anything, they can also be used for NFT game characters or even games. For example, CryptoKitties, is a popular NFT game, the first one of its kind, designed on blockchain technology. The popularity of CryptoKitties has resulted in great demand for NFT games, and there are actually some that have garnered an audience, like My Neighbor Alice, Sandbox, and many other NFT games.
That being said, it is still a relatively new technological innovation that requires most users to have an Ethereum crypto wallet. The NFT market is decentralized and still in its early stages of development as well as the NFT games, so we are yet to see what will happen in the future. But, based on the latest data and, in general, heightened interest in blockchain technology and crypto, we believe that NFTs in gaming is the future.
