It’s been just about a decade of smartphone video game activity. By now we recognize Android gaming as a massive category of entertainment in which phone and tablet users can find just about any gaming title they want with just a few touches of a screen. There are always new games, and frankly, it’s difficult to get bored with Android gaming even if you try to. However, this entertainment market—as firmly established as it may seem—may yet look quite different in a few more years. Indeed, it may only just be getting started.
The elephant in the room regarding any prediction like that is augmented reality. A close spinoff of the more publicized virtual reality, AR is (for now) primarily a technology we interact with through phones and tablets. It allows us to use these devices’ cameras to look at the screen and see what’s really there behind it, plus whatever virtual elements a given AR program wishes to put there. This tech has been put to use in gaming for about a year now following the introduction of the ARCore development platform. And we’re still very much in the early days. There’s a collection of good games in this category already, but in some respects, they resemble the simplicity of early smartphone games—which suggests they’re going to get more sophisticated and advanced with time.
While AR is closely associated with mobile gaming at this point, virtual reality shouldn’t be discounted either. Thanks to devices like the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream VR, Android devices can now be used as the foundation for virtual reality gaming as well. So, while VR titles still don’t strike us as traditional mobile games, there’s really no other way to characterize them in a lot of cases. Now, most Android-based VR is on the lower end of the medium in terms of quality and capability (when compared to devices like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift), but they get the job done, and as with AR, we can expect some natural improvement over time.
Moving away from new technologies for a moment, we should also expect the casino genre to represent something of a boom in Android gaming in the coming years. There are essentially two reasons for this. One is that individual slot and arcade games in this category are becoming more popular, as opposed to broad and uninteresting casino simulations. The most popular online games in the slot category include various themes (like Greek gods, desert riches, beaches, etc.) and all kinds of different gameplay tweaks and perks. There’s just growing variety that will lead to more individual games getting popular. The second reason is that real money casino gaming is more likely to be more widely legalized than less moving forward, which means significant expansion of this category.
We should also mention the potential for games that are, in the vaguest of terms, better. There are a lot of predictions as to how the smartphones in the near future will look, including folding screens, multiple cameras, and more. No matter what specific form these phones take, however, we should expect better and better processing power and displays, longer lasting batteries, and other general improvements. And so long as the devices keep getting better in these areas, games will continue to improve simply in their pure quality. It may be that 20 years into the smartphone era we look at the games of today much the same as if we were Xbox One gamers looking back on the Game Boy.
Note: This is a guest post. You’ll never find our opinions in them.
Are you interested in doing a guest or sponsored post or advertising in some other fashion? Fill out this form!
