The Latest Tech Trends In The Gaming World

It’s estimated that today the global gaming industry is worth around an astonishing $90 billion a year. It’s all a far cry from the earliest days of gaming where games were a little basic, to say the least.

But time, and technology, has moved on at pace, fuelled by the ever-growing numbers of players and increasing sophistication of the games themselves.

It’s a process that’s on-going so technological advances are continuing to be made and new trends are starting to emerge.

In many cases, these have been advances that would have been impossible to predict even a few years ago. For example, who could have foreseen that e-sports should grow so rapidly and that a generation of gamers would emerge who could become millionaires just by playing video games?

Today’s trends are undeniably wide-ranging and seem likely to change everything from how gamers access games to the experiences they’ll enjoy while playing them, and here are five examples.

The Rise Of Cloud Gaming

For some time now the writing has been on the wall for most kinds of recorded or stored media. We’ve seen it in the way that streaming services like Spotify and Netflix have taken over from the buying and owning of discs.

Exactly the same principle is at work in the world of gaming. By paying a monthly subscription to have a wide choice of games that you can play from the cloud it makes perfect sense.

With all of the big names from Amazon to Apple and Sony to Facebook now offering an ever-increasing selection of games, it’s set to snowball still further. Add to this the continuing rollout of 5G technology and it means that more and more sophisticated and complex games will start to be delivered this way on mobile platforms.

VR Is Here At Last

It seems to have been a long time coming, but the age of the VR game seems to have finally reached us. So far, it’s the big names in games like GTA, Doom and Minecraft that have embraced it most wholeheartedly, but others are set to follow.

In particular, it’s thought that online casino operators like Virgin Games are seriously looking into offering a range of VR titles that could also include free slot spins to attract new players.

Focusing on slots makes sense because these are undoubtedly the most popular kinds of game on any casino site, although other games like blackjack and roulette could also be transformed through the use of VR.

The increasing use of the technology has a great deal to do with the changing price of the hardware needed. VR headsets are now available to suit most budgets and with Apple due to release their own VR glasses in 2023 this is set to be another game changer.

Wearable Tech

It’s not just headsets that are transforming the gaming experience for some players, all kinds of wearable tech are too.

At its most basic level, this can take the form of smartwatches that can also play some admittedly fairly basic games to whole body suits that can enhance the VR gaming experience.

Somewhere in between these two extremes there are haptic vests that link to games and recreate the physical sensations of the action on screen. Players have tried them all confirm that it makes the gaming experience all the more intense if you can actually feel a physical blast as well as simply hearing it and seeing it in the gameplay.

We’re All In The Metaverse Now

There has been a great deal spoken and written about the metaverse in recent times and the idea that we are on the verge of existing in an online universe is an appealing one.

But for gamers this has already been a feature for some time now. After all, how else would you describe congregating online to partake in entertainment and competition?

For the gaming industry itself, this means that it already has a head start and it’s anticipated that many of the biggest titles will transform themselves into “platforms.” This, in turn, will allow them to share all kinds of exclusive content with players as well as creating a forum in which they can socialise and interact in any ways that they choose.

NFTs And Cryptocurrencies

One could argue that the emergence of Non Fungible Tokens are an inevitable off-shoot of the metaverse. Objects of rarity and value that have no real physical form certainly do seem to fit into the overall theory of a virtual online world.

So it’s no big surprise that more and more of these will start appearing in games, either in the form of in-game purchases or as rewards for particular achievements. A next step will probably be to encourage the trading of these tokens too.

Although not popular with some due to the high energy usage involved in creating NFTs, it seems almost inevitable that they will become a feature of games and gaming. Although there are similar reservations about the energy used to create cryptocurrencies, a number of games are also staring to introduce “play to earn” elements with payment being made just for participating.

So these are exciting times for games and gaming with many changes and developments on the way. Where it will ultimately lead, nobody knows. But we’re sure to have a lot of fun finding out.