There is no doubt that we are a general public who loves choice and convenience, we want to be able to choose when and where we play and nothing is more practical than the smartphone or the tablet, in fact we switch between mobile devices and the PC, using them all for much more than simply keeping in contact with friends or relatives.
Research has shown that even people who buy physical games are motivated to buy extra content, gaming has spread to a number of platforms, but at the end of the day it is the online casinos whether it is accessed through a mobile device or a PC where the future of gaming and gambling lies.
The last few years have seen what can only be called a dramatic shift towards mobile use and it’s now safe to say that the mobile gambling market will also grow at a faster and more dynamic pace than ever before, and as Wi-Fi is now faster and more available, mobile gambling has increased in popularity at an exponential rate. Many companies are planning to pursue mobile games aggressively, even to the point of making their main platform mobile.
One of the other new mediums taking our interest as well as our mistrust is virtual reality as some view it almost as sci-fi, and put that together with gambling and many politicians and anti-gambling groups will throw up their hands in horror at the very thought of virtual reality and gambling being in the same mix.
Some gambling jurisdictions are very likely to ban it whilst other could impose some restrictive regulations which would definitely have an adversely affect the market as it would limit the customer reach, what is clear is that if such an industry did develop it would face many hurdles, although facing hurdles in the online gambling industry has never been a new thing.
What can be said with no uncertainty is that the use of virtual reality will happen for online gambling, it is inevitable, and in fact it’s already arrived and ready to launch into the waiting market.
The Oculus Rift headset should be commercially available in the first quarter of 2016 with best practices such as clocks being visible on walls so that players do not lose themselves in the games being advised, although as yet it is a product with no market and no customer base.
It is going to be very interesting to see how gamblers will actually interact with casino operators in the future if this is not a gimmick, and when that customer base does develop, what will it look like?.. How big will it be? Again it appears to be another case of ‘watch this space and see.’
Cover Image via Jeff Turner
