When it comes to the future of gaming, technological advances are steering the way. In fact, most of the latest ideas in gaming often have to wait on incremental developments in new technology. Once upon a time, gamers dreamed of a future of holographic gaming. Today, that reality is more the domain of VR.
And even in terms of VR technology, there are still plenty of roadblocks faced by developers like Meta’s Oculus and Sony’s PlayStation VR. Hardware is expensive to build and can be faulty when set up in a living room. Meanwhile, gameplay mechanics still leave plenty to be desired—even with the latest rollouts of VR controllers.
Clearly, integrating the latest tech advances into a gaming format takes time. The process is iterative, requiring plenty of setbacks along the way. One of the latest tech sectors in gaming to see huge attention from developers and gamers is live streaming. The advent of 5G connections has boosted countless networks around the world, enabling stronger and more efficient streaming capabilities.
Already, it’s had a profound effect on multiple areas of the global gaming industry.
iGaming & Live Dealers
Though often overlooked by gaming publications that focus on eSports or Twitch, online casinos are one of the most robust sectors in terms of revenue, variety, and scale. One of the biggest games offered by online casinos is poker. Newcomers can easily find guides that lay out the basics, then get started playing their hands in table games or tournaments, playing for free or for money.
Recently, some platforms have launched VR poker rooms—but even more are going the way of live dealer games. A live dealer game includes a real-life dealer, who deals a game while being live streamed straight to a player’s home device. This latest advancement bridges the social and dynamic elements of brick-and-mortar casinos with the convenience of playing at home.
Diversification on Twitch
Back in 2011, Twitch launched as an online platform that allowed gamers to live stream their sessions to subscribers. Some streams were more focused on entertainment and community engagement, while others were all about showcasing a player’s insane skills in FPS or battle royale games.
The latest advances in live streaming are pushing Twitch accounts in new directions. One of the latest features added is a chat, which lets streamers engage with subs more efficiently and on a larger scale. The goal here is to push live streaming into a more interactive state, which would theoretically allow subs to interact with media in a chat—rather than just through text.
A Bold Future for Cloud Gaming
Along with steering casino gaming and helping advance the bounds of live streams on social sites, one of the biggest sectors focused on live streaming is cloud gaming. The idea behind cloud gaming is to minimize the amount of hardware involved in console and PC gaming. Rather than purchase physical copies, gamers can instead live stream a game straight to their device.
Think of it like a gaming subscription just like Netflix. Users don’t own the title, but instead, have access to it for a certain period of time. The current demands for cloud gaming are extensive; a network has to have incredible speeds to eliminate latency and avoid freezing, for example. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Many gaming-tech analysts are focused on how cloud gaming could revolutionize how and when people game. The basic theory is that cloud gaming will enable gamers to access their favourite titles from any place, at any time—at least, once internet connections have improved. This would eliminate the need for bulky hardware like an Xbox or a PC… and, combined with AR and VR, could see games reach a degree of accessibility previously thought impossible.
For example, cloud gaming would allow a person to seamlessly access a multiplayer online battle royale like League of Legends straight from a VR headset or even an AR-equipped smartphone—all while on a mobile network. No more ethernet. No more disc drives.
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