gaming industry

In recent years, the gaming industry has changed completely from conventional games to the open world of online games. The industry is always reinventing itself and will continue to change. In India, according to a report by Maple Capital Advisors, the Indian gaming industry is predicted to grow 41 percent annually to US$3,750 million by 2024. The growth in the market is largely driven by the rise of digital infrastructure and a substantial increase in quality and engaging gaming content. 

The global video game market is also forecast to add US$159 billion revenue in 2020, wherein the APAC region with almost 50 percent of the games market by value is leading the gaming market in the world. Meanwhile, the onset of COVID-19 is giving rise to the global gaming industry as gaming companies are supporting community initiatives to address the effects of the pandemic. 

For instance, Roblox, an online game platform, launched a new initiative that could raise as much as US$2 million for COVID-19 relief. The company has brought a series of in-game items, which will be sold to raise money for the pandemic relief efforts at No Kid Hungry, UNICEF USA, and Code.org. In addition, PC gamers have been asked to contribute their unused computational power to assist researchers to better understand the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, they need to download Folding@home, a distributed computing project for disease research which leverages idle resources to simulate protein folding. With this, gamers can help researchers in developing treatments for the novel coronavirus.

With the rapid advancements and innovations of technology, the interaction of people with casino games online has also transformed. Rather than playing the same fruit slots repeatedly, game developers are now using technology to make online gambling more immersive, including VR slots, live dealers, 3D games, and more. By making use of VR headsets, the gaming world around a gamer presents an immersed environment that mimics a real-life casino. 

In a recently published report by ResearchAndMarkets.com, the global market of online gambling is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.2 percent from US$58.9 billion in 2019 to US$66.7 billion in 2020. This market growth is majorly driven by the outbreak of COVID 19. Since billions of people are advised to stay home to prevent the spread of the virus, they are increasingly participating in several free and paid leisure activities including online gambling. 

Back in India, there are more than 400 gaming startups in the country and with over 500 million smartphone users as of December 2019. Mobile gaming is leading an 85 percent share of online gaming in India. Moreover, Tencent this month releases its first-quarter revenue of 2020, witnessing year-on-year online games revenue increased by 31 percent.

The gaming development landscape is largely led by video game developers. This is, however, is expected to be faded in the future with the rise of new tools that make it less important to procure a software development kit (SDK) and easier for independent game developers or even lone wolves to develop and launch their own games.