I’ll give you some figures at first. In the last year was a banner year for the global gaming market. Total revenue stood at £ 79bn at the end of 2017, not to mention its impact on other sectors, where it has contributed over £ 100m to the UK film and merchandising industries alone. Mobile casinos are more prevalent now than at any time in history.
But why?
The longevity of a game is increasingly dependent on the quality of the online game modes. When the offline content ends, what is left? This is where a game’s PVP (player vs. player) modes or online cooperative modes should shine. Check out Halo 5, released in 2015, but the World Championships the biggest event in the competitive gaming calendar, with a major prize pool of more than $ 1 million. This change in online games’ popularity has proven to be the catalyst for the gaming industry’s recent success over the past decade. The developers behind titles like Overwatch and DOTA have seen the popularity of this type of game skyrocket, creating titles that are just online PVP games, so you must be connected to the internet to play with/against other people even play the game.
Why has it become so popular?
To put it bluntly, as technology improves, the gaming experience improves. Technology has made incredible progress over the last decade. We now have faster internet speeds. The internet is more accessible to more people. There is just a MASSIVE variety of games to play, from the first-person shooter to bakery simulators to sports games. However, an interesting factor is that console, and PC games have been in decline for the past five years, with console sales declining and fewer blockbuster titles. But this growth is mainly due to the immense popularity of games on mobile devices.
Games have been (very) successful in migrating from consoles to mobile devices. Mobile titles have become the fastest-growing, accounting for 43% of the global games market at $ 50.4 billion, a huge increase from 19. 3% over last year and the only gaming platform that has not seen a decline in recent years (the PC gaming market declined 2.6% last year, for example).
Advancing within the industry
It may sound simple, but popularity can have the biggest impact on a game’s success. For example, Battle Royale games, such as PUBG, Fortnite, and H1Z1, are becoming increasingly popular with new titles and entering the arena every month. This is mainly because few online games offer this mode of play, much less specialize in it. The recent hype that is Fortnite has prompted developers at Epic Games to create a mobile version of the game. So the most popular video game today is not only purely online, but the creators saw the potential of mobile games and are in the process of including the platform in the portfolio of titles.
As global connectivity explodes, so does the ability to connect and play with people worldwide. Microsoft, the company behind Xbox, is very involved in the community.