Trends in Mobile Gaming (Release 2019)

It's a good year to be a mobile player: Many companies have announced their plans for the future of mobile gaming in 2020, and the news looks pretty impressive. We are about to enter a period where connection quality is more important than the power of your mobile devices, and it is no longer a dream to see incredible graphics quality even on budget phones. We've compiled the latest trends in mobile gaming for you: Here are the technologies we'll soon meet. 

The Power of the Cloud

In the past, when you wanted to play slots on theinternetslots.com/, for example, the quality of the graphics was determined by the hardware power of your device. With cloud technology, this is about to change: Smartphones will now only serve as a “receiver”. You probably already know this technology - Google is planning to offer game streams for PCs on its Stadia platform. This technology is based on a very simple logic: Games are run on powerful computers in the cloud, and you are actually watching a stream on your screen. However, unlike Twitch broadcasts, it is possible to give real-time commands in this stream. For example, when you press a key on your keyboard, the character on the screen moves. In this way, even on cheap netbooks, you can play the latest games with ultra-graphics settings.

This technology can also be used for mobile phones, and technologies like Stadia also work on mobile platforms. Microsoft will stream Xbox games to mobile phones in real time via its “Project xCloud” platform. In this way, even games developed for the PC platform can be played on the phones. Tencent recently announced that it is working on a similar technology for Android-based phones - both platforms are expected to be launched in 2020. We're not limited to Play Store or App Store anymore: We'll be able to play all games on mobile phones, no matter what platform they are published on.  

We Will See More Competitive Games

If you like to play Candy Crush on your mobile phones, you may not like this news: Mobile gaming trends show that casual games are in a period of decline. Instead of casual games and short game sessions, competitive games that require long game times are on the rise. Moreover, these are PvP games, which means you have to play against real players, not against the computer. The best examples of this trend are Fortnite, PUBG, and Call of Duty: Mobile. Published in 2019, these games are played by tens of millions of players and appeal to a larger audience than the PC platform. Real-time battles and Battle Royale games are on the rise: Developer companies now prefer to spend their budgets on such games. So, you will play less Angry Birds and more PUBG on your phones.

There Are More Women Players Than You Think

If you think mobile players are made up of adolescent boys aged 12-14, you are wrong. Maybe, this was the case in the past, but now there is a different picture. A study by Google shows that women between the ages of 10 and 65 play mobile games more and more, and even make up more than half of the mobile player community. This is also the case for game development: The number of female mobile game developers has increased by 2% compared to 2018, reaching 19%. In other words, women are more represented in the mobile gaming industry as both players and developers. The statistics show that this situation will keep increasing, so in 2020 we can expect to see many more female mobile game developers (and gamers).

AR Technology Is on the Rise

Augmented reality (AR) technology is not a new trend, but we still cannot fully utilize it because the mobile hardware is not strong enough. This is about to change - in 2020, we can start to use all the features of AR technology. This is similar to VR technology, but it does not require glasses: Your mobile phone's camera is used to place items on real-world images. To give a simple example, if you turn on your camera and point it to an empty table, you will see a “virtual cup” on your screen, placed on the same table. You can also interact with this virtual item, for example, by holding and lifting the cup.

This is a very exciting technology and effective enough to create a personal gaming field for every player. Pokemon Go, The Walking Dead Our World, and Jurassic World Alive are the first examples of games that use this technology, but we know that the developers are planning much more. For example, a new generation Harry Potter game is being developed with AR. In short, we will see AR technology more often in the near future.