With the rapid development of technology, industries are trying their hardest to keep up and evolve alongside it. An excellent example of this is the online iGaming market, which has seen constant growth in the past few years. The revenues in the online gambling industry are rising rapidly as the industry grows more innovative and technologically advanced, and online slots are just one of the most popular elements of this particular market.
According to Grand View Research, the global online iGaming market size is predicted to reach USD 102.97 billion by 2025, considering the steady annual growth rate of 11.5% from 2019 to 2025. Gaming online prevails among other entertainments due to the growth of various devices, the creation of new gameplay mechanics every year, and others. The online slots category is also in the list of upgrade expectations, which include advances gamification, 3D video slots, VR technology, and skill-based machines with new gaming mechanics.
Online Slots keep a trend in 2020
New trends appear every year, and it seems that developers will never run out of the flow of ideas. Thankfully to the rapid development of technology and a more thoughtful understanding of the audience, annual innovations became familiar. The gambling industry keeps up with the video gaming market in creating new games and mechanics of gameplay. By producing new products, the iGaming market ensures a growing market share in the gaming industry in general.
Source: SuperData
New trends continue to immerse the gambling market majorly in the UK, USA, Australia. The most promising category is online slots. According to statistics, the share of mobile slot players is 62% among all social casino players. They spend an hour each day playing slots on mobile. The industry must keep up with the latest technologies to grow the audience further and keep customers engaged. Market leaders IGT, Aristocrat, and NetEnt, succeed in creating dozens of penny slots, win real money slots, and free slot games covering popular themes and celebrities. They also examined new mechanics such as bonus free spins and bonus rounds. Later, the market saw no download, no registration required slots that flip over the industry. It has become a starting point of the new no money slots category.
Therefore, if customers start searching for how to play free slots online, they will be littered with free slot games to play for fun online offers. It is tough to find the best slots to play in such an oversaturated market. That is why the industry has to produce the latest trends to stand out among others. In 2019 the online slot market adopted such trends:
● Gamification
● 3D slots
● VR slots
● Skill-based games
Most of these reflect some of the most popular trends in the video game market, with VR especially taking all gaming markets by storm over the past 12 months. Others are unique only for the iGaming market.
Gamification
Gamification is a trend that people can find everywhere now, especially in online slots. As slot providers look for the best way to keep players entertained, gamification has become one of the most popular trends. The basic principle behind this is making things more like a game; to try and make typically tedious tasks a lot more enjoyable.
As far as slots are concerned, this means that the bonus features and other bonuses are increasingly changing if they play for a longer time. This trend is also available in online casinos, meaning that they offer various tournaments and leaderboards, with cash prizes an incentive to keep people playing. This trend is beneficial for providers of the game because it makes the player chose a game instead of a competitor’s game and for online casinos because it keeps the player engaged in the games for longer.
Gamification is also connected to the decline of regular reel-spinning slots. Customers just do not find classic fruit machines as entertaining anymore, with online play decreasing the attention span of players. Therefore, gamification is being utilized by slot providers to keep people interested. One of the most popular slots is Reactoonz because it features tumbling reels and a whole new innovative idea about paylines that rewards loyal play.
3D slots
3D graphics started to infiltrate into online video games in the year 2017, and that caused an impact on the online slot market too. It is without a doubt that this trend will remain in 2020 because of the growth of the gambling market. These are massive upgrades from the basic 2D graphics and symbols that have occupied online slots for far too long.
There are many amazing slots with 3D graphics, but some of the best are The SlotFather and Mr. Vegas. The SlotFather II takes the player right into the middle of an Italian gangster family, and they will get to enjoy all the Slotfather’s cronies. This game is popular; it features terrific animated sequences that create the best atmosphere of the Mafia-owned businesses.
VR slots
The future stands in the hands of the VR. Virtual reality first crept onto the video game market a few years ago, bringing science fiction into reality. Since then consumer VR revenue grew to USD 9.6B and is expected to double to 2021. VR places the player inside the game and carries a new level of immersive experience. As VR tech swept the video game market, it was only going to be a matter of time before it started being applied to slots. In 2019, this happened, and VR slots began to take off.
Source: SuperData
The most popular VR slots in 2019 were Jack and the Beanstalk VR and Gonzo’s Quest VR Slot. Jack and the Beanstalk VR was one of the first games that utilized virtual reality and is therefore considered to be a pioneering VR slot. Gonzo’s Quest VR Slot will give people the best VR experience because they can get a 360-degree view, which will make this game more exciting. VR slots help emulate the feeling of being in a real land-based casino, as far as offering multiplayer experiences with other players to increase the immersion.
Skill-based games
Skill-based games are a recent development in the online slot market, having just begun to crop up in 2019. What makes this different to typical online slots is that players can choose between free spins or skill-based round. If they are choosing the second option, in Space Invaders slot, for example, they will be given a bonus game where they will participate in a recreation of the titular video game, shooting aliens with their ship to win a prize.
Allowing people to play skill-based mini-games within slots is growing in popularity because it gives the player an element of control to their gambling, something that is not present with typical slot machines. Being able to influence somewhat what you do and do not win gives people the feeling that they are responsible for what they earn, eliminating the typical lack of control people feel with regular slots.
Real-money gaming has seen tremendous growth in the last few years because of the new games that have a bigger chance of winning per game. People get more and more excited about the latest trends and decide to play for real to win high amounts of money.
People might also choose the real money version because they get different bonuses from the casino, bonuses that players would not usually get in a free version of the slot. These include welcome bonuses, no deposit bonuses, and random bonuses. They typically consist of free credits or spins or both, and the random bonus can be generated by the casino if people haven’t played in a while or if they just randomly won a giveaway.
It should be noted that the welcome and no deposit bonuses can be unlocked after an account has been made, and the player had deposited funds.
Conclusion
The future of the online slot market is very bright since people opt to play mostly online instead of going to a land-based casino these days. That is why they are on a slow decline. Next year, almost everything will happen online, meaning that the companies have to start developing new innovative ideas about the online user-experience and make more mobile-friendly games. With the development of technology, the gambling industry has to make some serious decisions, which will revolutionize this market forever.
Ultimately, the reason that slot providers want to improve their video slots is to make the user experience better and, consequently, keep the player playing for longer. Nobody wants to spend hours on regular slots with a shoddy user interface and a lack of exciting features. Fundamentally, the more innovative a slot provider can become, the more successful they are likely to be. Everybody benefits from this as the players get a better experience with the slots while the provider continues to earn the loyalty of customers.
Tags: casino games
