We are now living in a world dominated by smartphones, and they are changing every aspect of our daily lives. Thanks to the mainstream use of smartphones, for instance, people are now shopping online more than ever. Similarly, smartphones are also what led to the blowing up of social media, and they also revolutionized the way we consume different forms of entertainment, especially when it comes to gaming.
The gaming industry felt the largest impact from smartphones because it was one of the few industries that rightly bet on the potential of the mobile marketplace and took action when the iron was hot. As smartphone technology continues to improve, the quality of games produced has also been getting better to a point where you can now play slots for real money via mobile devices and enjoy the exact same experience as you would on your PC.
How the Gaming World Has Been Revolutionized by Technology
Here’s a closer look at how the gaming world has changed thanks to the adoption of smartphones, and the technologies that surround the mobile device industry at large.
Enhanced Social Features
Currently, there’s a growing trend where developers of mobile games are increasingly implementing features that promote social gaming, or rather social interaction as players take part in their favorite games. At the moment, real-time communication between participating players is normal.
Better yet, players who aren’t playing in a specific match can watch their friends and cheer them on in real-time through in-game spectator capabilities, or live streams where the gamer broadcasts to a larger audience. To top it all off, now that browser-based gaming is catching on, it is now easier for players to share their achievements across social media in a single click.
New and Improved Forms of Mobile Gaming
The continuous innovation of developers within the mobile gaming segment has resulted in the introduction of new mobile gaming genres. As a result, games are no longer simply placed in one category or another, as they’ll often overlap and equally fit in various classifications.
Today, for example, you could have a puzzle game that’s also a builder-strategy game or an RPG to bring you the best of different worlds in a single unified experience. One of the main reasons why this cross-genre gaming has been adopted is because of their diversity is the flexibility smartphones offer.
Moreover, if you look at the games that have gone viral of late, you’ll notice that the majority of them are mobile games. The likes of Fortnite, PUBG and most recently Call of Duty Mobile currently enjoy hundreds of millions of active players.
VR and AR Smartphone Gaming
If you bring Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality gaming into the mix of mobile gaming, you’ll have a level of immersion that no one could have thought possible a decade ago. Smartphone manufacturers and game developers alike are taking notes and they are already finding ways of integrating VR and AR into mobile gaming to offer players more immersion.
To catch up with the console and PC gaming experience, most flagship mobile phones in the market are equipped with performance enhanced software and hardware features that can seamlessly handle VR technology. For instance, Flagship smartphones from the likes of Samsung, Apple, and Huawei come with bigger RAM capacities and more powerful processors to handle modern games better.
A Rapidly Growing Market That Will Continue Expanding
From the days of Tetris and Snake mobile games, mobile gaming has undergone an impressive revolution. As mobile devices continue to get more powerful, the games themselves are also getting better, and the market is also growing bigger. Based on a recent report by Newzoo, a well-known market research firm, mobile game revenue hill hit $77.2 billion by the end of 2020 after over 13% growth compared to last year.
Overall, the number of mobile gamers will hit 2.6 billion this year, and 38% of these gamers will spend money on these games. Additionally, the Newzoo report also indicates that mobile gaming will continue being the fastest-growing segment compared to PC and console gaming.
With such impressive numbers in play, it is safe to say that the mobile gaming industry has a bright future, particularly when we consider the fact that our dependence on smartphones is always increasing. It is now upon the game developers and device manufacturers to continue rolling out better games across all genres to ensure that players will continue to enjoy gaming on the go so much that they won’t miss playing on consoles or PCs.