The gaming industry has evolved a lot over the last five decades, growing from an embryonic state into the flourishing success that it is today. It has achieved this success by being agile and adaptive, constantly evolving with changing trends.
These trends are triggered by a range of sources, including amongst players themselves who change what they want from video games over time. But they can also come from technological revolution and evolution, as well as regulatory requirements and economic conditions.
For example, many modern video games are offered to players for free but then charge for in-game items and provide regular updates to give new content for users to engage with. This change has been driven by the proliferation of the internet and its gradual increase in bandwidth, as well as increasing economic pressures on video game developers, and a desire for players to feel more connected to the characters that they play with.
While you might think that technology is by far the biggest driver, it usually cannot operate on its own. Virtual reality gaming, for example, remains a niche gaming sub-market, despite the billions invested in research and development by big companies like Meta and Sony. Social pressures and the inconvenience of needing to strap on a bulky pair of binoculars to your head to play has not made VR gaming the attractive proposition it was once billed as.
With this in mind, what can we expect to see happen in the gaming industry in the coming years?
Online Casinos Will Continue to Create New Games
Online casinos have been around since the late 1990s and have been one of the most innovative and adaptable parts of the gaming industry. While early operators required you to download their own special software and were only compatible with Windows, modern online casinos have browser-based and mobile app versions of their games so that players can enjoy a flutter wherever they are and no matter which device they’re using.
The market has grown dramatically in recent years with growth continuing, often in double-digit percentages. For example, the UKGC recently published stats for the year to June 2024 that showed online slot revenues increased by 10% and the number of spins rose by 12%.
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As demand for online casino gaming grows, operators in this space need to compete hard for these new players. One way to do this is to offer attractive bonuses, but it is likely there will be regulatory curbs placed on these in the coming years, so a key way to stand out will be for casinos to create their own unique games and game variants.
We can already see this happening at PokerStars Casino which offers a choice of different roulette games, including PokerStars Roulette, High Roller Roulette, and American Roulette. They all use the same standard rules but offer slight tweaks to the mechanics, limits, and odds to appeal to different groups of players.
New Releases Elsewhere
In recent years, it has been notable how few big franchises have seen new sequels. Valve hadn’t created a follow up to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive since 2012, Rockstar Games hadn’t announced a new Grand Theft Auto game since the release of GTA V in 2013, and 2011’s Minecraft continues to be the best-selling and one of the most-played video games on the planet.
Improving working conditions, increasing costs in game development, and economic pressures on players all meant that publishers couldn’t churn out big titles as quickly as they once could. For example, the time taken to release a new main GTA title has gradually grown from just one year between GTA III and Vice City, to four years between San Andreas and GTA IV, and at least 12 years between GTA V and GTA VI.
Part of this has been because video games have got bigger, requiring more resources and people to make them a reality, but it’s also because publishers have realised that they can make higher margins by selling subscriptions and in-game content for their existing games.
Players, however, are now chomping at the bit to get their teeth into new releases of their favorite franchises and publishers are responding.
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Counter-Strike 2 is Valve’s response, which saw average playing numbers nearly double from the aging CS:GO. We can expect even bigger results when GTA VI finally drops. With that being the case, publishers of other major games either are working on sequels for their IP already or will soon be following suit as they look to refresh their offering too.
