The global gaming market is developing at an accelerated pace. New markets appear all the time, with some of today’s largest in the world practically not even existing just a decade ago. The mobile gaming market was proven to be especially resilient and able to survive many challenges without almost any setbacks.
But it is already clear that the future of the gaming industry is in Cloud Computing. How will it all look like? Let’s see keyboards.
Global Gaming Market – the Current State
In recent years, we witnessed incredible growth in the global gaming market. For example, the online gaming market – in the US only – currently stands at $2.9 billion.
Mobile gaming is growing especially fast and is today a larger industry than console and PC gaming. In 2020, there were more than 2.4 billion mobile gamers in the world. It is predicted that this number will increase to 2.7 billion by the end of this year. In the same period, the worth of the global mobile gaming market is predicted to reach $165 billion.
On the other hand, the PC and console gaming market is seeing a slow decline this year, for the first time in history. This decline could partly be attributed to the events that hit the world throughout 2020, and a quite expensive gear needed. On the contrary, the mobile gaming industry saw no signs of slowing down. In fact, it is predicted to generate $90.7 billion in 2021, growing +4.4% year on year.
But even with small bumps in the road, the global gaming market will continue to grow in the following years and is predicted to reach the worth of $200 billion at the end of 2023. And a big part of this growth has been the rise of the online gaming market in India, which became the second-largest online gaming market worldwide, just one step behind China.
According to some predictions, the gaming market in India is estimated to grow from the current $1.83 billion to $3.91 billion in 2025 – this is a rise of 113%. In the same period, the number of players is expected to grow from 433 million to 657 million. And parallel to this rise is the tremendous growth of the iGambling market in India – it is estimated that it became the largest in the world.
At the moment, the Indian online casino market is valued at $930 million, which makes it the most valuable online gambling industry worldwide. Regardless of this incredible success, according to local online casino guides like Asiabet, online casino gambling is still in the gray area in India (meaning that some states have it legalized, while others completely ban it) – but still, Indian casino players have a big variety of games to choose from. Everything from traditional games like Rummy to modern western types like Poker applies.
The Future of Gaming
So far we have examined how mobile gaming is more vital and more immune to the volatile character of the market. A lot of that has to do with the lower hardware requirements for a mobile gamer compared to a PC or console.
But what if there were practically no hardware requirements for the players? What if anyone with a smartphone could be able to play the latest and most demanding games? This not only sounds perfect, but is the outcome we are heading to, and in big steps. This is the nearest gaming future, and it is called cloud gaming.
Cloud gaming is a way to play games through remote hardware – there is no need for players to download the game to their device, but they can play the game by streaming it. This means that you do not need to have powerful hardware in your hands to play advanced games, only a good enough Internet connection – which is becoming reality for more and more people with the spread of 5G technology.
How much potential cloud gaming has is evident when you consider that even companies like Netflix are currently planning to enter the market – already in 2022, Netflix will offer video games on their streaming platform. This is the company’s first move beyond film and TV, with Mike Verdu as vice president of game development to lead this effort.
And we already have established cloud gaming systems out there, such as Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, Xbox Game Pass, and PlayStation Now. In addition to that, it seems that Windows 11 updates will support cloud gaming as well.
Finishing Words
The gaming industry in all of its forms will continue to grow and develop new markets. The mobile gaming industry especially doesn’t need to worry about its future. But at this moment, we can clearly see that the future of the industry lies in cloud computing. Especially because its development is so much in sync with all other significant trends, which also enable cloud gaming – such as the continued spread of smartphones across the globe or the development of 5G super-fast Internet connections.
Chances are that if you own a smartphone, you will be a cloud gamer soon enough.