With esports having quickly grown to become one of the most popular regular sporting events in the world, the recent successes found with the fastest selling consoles of all times with the newest Playstation and Xbox both taking the crown despite supply issues, and the mobile space growing to become the most popular of all with changing demographics and a growing audience – gaming is certainly bigger than it has ever been and only looks to take off more too with changing legislation and laws too particularly across the US as these gambling laws look to make some online gaming platforms even more accessible. But what does this mean for the future of gaming?
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Esports will continue to grow – As the face of gaming on the global stage with some of the biggest events in the world, esports will certainly look to remain as the public face of gaming and something that has helped bridge the gap between audiences too. Hopes still to exist to see esports folded into bigger global events like the Olympics, but as the biggest tournaments pull in over 100 million concurrent viewers for things like the worlds finals, there’s no shortage of attention. The current focus remains on the dedicated PC market for esports, but as mobile esports looks to emerge and grow particularly in regions where gaming is already well established, there could yet be a second wave of new esports emerging.
Mobile will remain accessible for more casual players – There’s no denying the impact that mobile has had on welcoming an older and less likely audience to attach themselves to gaming, and is a surprising change as the majority of gamers are now over the age of 34 and most likely to play on mobile – given the huge focus from developers, it does seem as if mobile will be the one platform that sticks around for a longer period of time too and shows no signs of slowing down as mobile numbers grow year on year, and microtransactions within mobile games lead the way forward for other industries too.
Consoles remain ever popular in era of gaming change – Despite the huge successes on mobile and PC, the releases of the latest consoles have shown that there’s no slowing down the console market either as they have become the fastest selling consoles of all times. There’s a lot of question marks around the longevity of console platforms given the need for regular change, particularly when compared to mobile, but it seems to show that there’s no change needed here either. Mobile will certainly continue to be the face of gaming in the future, but there’s plenty of space for consoles to continue both competing and succeeding too.