Gaming is one of the biggest forms of entertainment today and has grown to rival many traditional mediums. Hollywood generates around $80 billion of revenue from movie productions each year. In contrast, around $90.7 billion has been made just from mobile gaming in 2021, with console gaming adding almost $50 billion and another nearly $36 billion coming from PC players
The industry is huge and can describe nearly half of the world’s population as a customer. Gaming companies have fared well in recent years as they’ve developed new types of content and more and more people have become interested in playing their titles.
But with 2021 nearly over, many people are beginning to focus on next year. Here’s what can we expect to see in the gaming space in 2022.
Delays
The final few weeks of 2020 provided a case study on how not to release and promote a video game. Cyberpunk 2077 was released onto the current and last generations of console and PC, promising to be one of the most detailed titles ever created.
However, it didn’t even come close to living up to the hype thanks to the endless stream of issues that resulted in lag, crashing, glitching, and a very poor playing experience. Gamers took to social media at the time to complain about the issues, resulting in Cyberpunk being removed from both the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Games Store.
It wasn’t until July 2021 that the game would go back on sale to PlayStation owners after most of the hype around the game had died down.
Since then, many publishers have repeatedly delayed new releases throughout 2021. Titles like GTA V Enhanced, King of Fighters XV, Saints Row, and Gran Turismo 7 have all been pushed back as their developers would rather that than face the wrath of angry gamers and poor sales results.
Growing Demand for Casino Games
While most casino games are hundreds of years old, they’ve only been available to play on computers for around a quarter of a century. In that short time, demand for online casino gaming has skyrocketed. In the UK, the Gambling Commission has reported that over £6 billion is spent each year on “remote wagering”.
The European market for online casino games is already mature, with millions of players across the continent and several large companies that own many different brands. Competition is strong among them, resulting in the use of tactics like developing exclusive slots such as Winter Fall, Tomb of Ra, and Diamond Stars, as well as the use of bonuses in marketing.
While the European casino market is already huge, it will likely continue to grow in 2022, but the biggest impact will be seen in the US. Across the pond, more and more states are legalising iGaming meaning ever-growing numbers of Americans are getting access to real money blackjack and slots on their smartphones for the first time.
A Push for More VR
Facebook’s recent announcement that it was changing its name to Meta and that it would be focusing on building products for the metaverse was met with a mixture of intrigue and scepticism.
While many Chief Executives are struggling to get their heads around the metaverse concept, most people in the gaming industry see it as only a matter of time before gaming and the metaverse converge.
For this reason, it is likely that there will be a bigger push for virtual reality in gaming in 2022.
Titles like Cities, NERF, Hitman 3, Assassin’s Creed, and Splinter Cell are all getting virtual reality makeovers in 2022. Similarly, Meta has announced that it is working on a VR version of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, but almost no information about its forecasted release date or how it will work have been made available to the public.
These AAA titles could be a sign that we are nearing a tipping point for virtual reality. Up until now, it has been the domain of VR enthusiasts, but blockbuster franchises could help to make the technology mainstream.
