There is no doubt that COVID-19 has had a profound impact on every industry in the world, and the gaming industry is no exception. As the saying goes, there are two sides to every coin, gaming has the good fortune of seeing positive effects from the pandemic. The pandemic is driving people across the globe to spend more time at home, making a lot of them turn to the game for entertainment and escape reality. As a result, gaming has boomed as people seek out ways to occupy themselves when they can’t venture outside during the successive rounds of restrictions.
Gaming as a Social Platform
Today, the big games are acting as a social platform where people are likely to play games to interact with their friends and allow them to have a digital social life in the absence of real social life and meet friends of friends who become gamer friends. The platform is not only for gaming, its social value right now is at an all-time high and is driving consumption and spending.
The gaming industry also drives business for other parts of the industry. For instance, the Epic Games’ Fortnite made a breakthrough where Sony allowed PlayStation players on the same battlefield with Xbox players. It’s all about the gimmicks, where gamers would invite friends on a mobile device to play and the mobile player realizes that they’re at a disadvantage as they don’t have a big screen and would drive them to go buy an Xbox. There is also a creeping phenomenon for gamers to subscribe to small subscriptions to keep playing games online with Microsoft’s, Nintendo’s, and Sony’s systems. The gaming industry is not only getting people on a recurring monthly payment model, it is also providing the opportunity for upside from digital sales.
Cloud Gaming: Transforming the Video Games Industry
Even before the pandemic hit the globe, the hottest growth area has been cloud-based services. The industry is looking forward to a future where the requirement for complex hardware will no longer be a necessity.
Cloud gaming is here to stay and it is going to change the way we look at video games in this digital world as the technology allows players to play across any high-ending title with just a basic machine. The one thing the gamer needs is a stable internet connection with a minimum bandwidth requirement.
The researchers have estimated that the global cloud gaming market will reach a market size of 3.17 billion by 2024 where the causal gamer can make a lot of money from it.
Mobile Games are Leading the Industry
The industry’s console and PC side are facing a challenge of how to get more money per customer. The surge in popularity of mobile gaming during the pandemic has driven people to use gaming as stress relief, kill time, gain a sense of accomplishment and connect with others. Ultimately, the shift towards social gaming, along with the surge in new gamers and the widespread adoption of mobile gaming will continue to affect the gaming industry in 2022 and beyond.
Enabling the Future of Gaming
Be it PC games, Console games, or even mobile games, more than 80% of Gen Z and Millennials are playing video games more than ever. The entire industry – creating, deployment, and consumption has changed. It is an exciting journey that has just begun and will revolutionize the whole world of the gaming industry yet again. With the cloud at the heart of everything in this world, it really feels like the sky is the limit and anything is possible.