Gaming Industry: Trends and Predictions for 2018

It’s arguably one of the most rapidly growing industry verticals today but how will the gaming landscape evolve and chance during 2018?

That’s one of the biggest questions today as the gaming industry keeps growing at a frantic rate, evolving both through technology and the consumers’ tastes which have a huge part in shaping it.

Developers, operators and ultimately consumers will undoubtedly face a challenging time during the newly arrived year which will welcome a set of new – and more importantly – tighter regulations to make the ever-emerging gaming scene as clearer and fairer.

Cryptocurrencies Coming

With regulations becoming a growing concern for a great number of operators within the gaming industry, regulation will rapidly become a material part of operations with gaming members expected to increase the quality of their regulated earnings and revenues.

In addition to standard currencies and dealings with monetary aspects that are already well-established, license holders are encouraged to start accepting cryptocurrencies to a more pronounced extent in 2018.

A solid shift in trend could be expected out of the simple fact that such monetary solutions are becoming a highly convenient form with limitless potential.

Mobile Gaming on the Rise

All members of the gaming industry will also level the business towards the growing demands of the end-product consumers who are slowing a strong shift towards the mobile gaming.

The emergence of the mobile sector has reinvented the way content and products are developed, configured and delivered to make sure a seamless transition from formerly dominant desktop channel is achieved across all available platforms.

A special focus is put of cost-effectiveness and performance as mobile gaming holds the torch forward through yet uncharted territories of a seemingly limitless gaming landscape.

VR Revolution

The past year has seen developers experimenting with Virtual Reality (VR) and the number of manufacturers and providers introducing this exciting technology is ever-increasing.

The software and hardware integration into the gaming ecosystem may present the biggest challenge in developing a reasonably accessible and affordable gaming systems. Developers are not expected to budge in front of the challenge and will look into ways to start implementing the VR more and more into the gaming landscape.

After all, with the use of data-driven machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its foundation, VR is set to become more prevalent across the industry albeit that developers are – for now – preferring AR.

Focus on AR

Augmented Reality (AR) – unlike VR – is not bound by hardware limitations and allows an easy access through smart devices. Hand in hand with the emergence of mobile gaming, AR is expected to come under focus given it involves a low investment cost, thus being a more accessible alternative to VR.

Both VR and AR are still a long way from entering the gambling aspect of the gaming market, but they both have already announced themselves as important mediums.

The gambling industry is expected to show a steady growth in availability of gambling-related VR and AR content with a strong shift expected to follow soon enough.