TechStory: gaming trends that defined the past 10 years

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The digital gaming industry is just over 50 years old and has come a long way since its launch in the 60s. It’s hard to keep track of the many different trends popping up before our eyes these past few years. The innovations that looked fascinating in the early 2010s are now considered old school.

It’s funny how we were so eager to unbox the Playstation 4 console that our parents promised us for Christmas during the 2013 winter holiday season. Today’s kids will be more familiar with online gaming with FanDuel and live streaming gaming services than with some of the video console games we grew up playing. How fast the times have changed!

Yes, we know that change is bound to occur in any growing industry. But never in a million years could we have imagined this level of innovation.

Although big gaming franchises, like Xbox and Playstation, are still the talk of the town today. Their products and offerings have evolved so much over the past ten years.

As this decade is relatively new, it’s good we take a trip down memory lane, revisiting some of the developments and trends that shaped the gaming industry in the past decade:

Twitch

Who still walks into the mall to spectate a video game competition today? Not so many people.

Many gamers know Twitch to be the most popular video gaming live stream service. But only a few people know that this platform has been around for quite a while. It launched in June 2011 and was originally marketed as a spin-off to the popular streaming platform Justin.tv.

Twitch’s popularity has surged since it began focusing on video game live streams and is currently the go-to platform for e-sports competitions. It’s known for broadcasting competitive video games like the battle royals shooter and League of Legends. Many of the biggest YouTube game enthusiasts, like RDCWorld1 and Dontai, have garnered a large following on Twitch. Its scope has since expanded beyond video games to entertainment, sports, and lifestyle content.

Twitch was purchased by tech juggernaut Amazon in 2015 for a staggering $1 billion. On average, about 15 million active users visit the platform daily.

Gaming Subscription

Gone are the days when you had to download a game on your console or wait for an update!

We’ve seen TV and Music subscription services reach popularity in the past decade, and the same can be said about gaming subscriptions. Tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon have taken a clue from services like Netflix and Spotify.

Today, we have a lot of gaming subscription offerings in the market, a big boost to this industry. Services like EA Access, Xbox Game Pass, Playstation Now, Twitch Prime, and Apple Music have all proven to be hugely successful, and the market has become very competitive in recent times.

Many game genres available make gaming subscriptions more utilizable, and it’s good news for both tech companies and game lovers. Gaming subscription is bound to take modern-day gaming to a whole new level.

Mobile Gaming

Do you remember playing Snake Xenzia on your Nokia cellphone? Yes, mobile games have been around for that long. However, the iOS App Store launch in mid-2008 made mobile gaming a much more popular trend.

Apple took it up a notch when it introduced in-app purchases in 2009. Since then, we’ve seen a steep increase in mobile game development and revenue for these companies.

In 2019, Nintendo scored one of its biggest mobile game launches of all time, with Call of Duty racking up more than 148 million first-month downloads and 270 million downloads by the end of the year.

Tencent’s Honor of Kings became the highest-earning mobile video game in 2020, grossing over $2.5 billion worldwide. Since its launch on Android and iOS, it has ranked one of the most downloaded mobile games on these app stores. Today, Honor of Kings has more than 100 million daily active players and is currently mainland China’s most trending MOBA game.

Conclusion

Modern-day gaming has evolved into a huge market and will continue to grow bigger. We have live-streaming platforms, gaming subscription services, and the advent of portable consoles to thank for making video games easily accessible to everyone.

Modern-day gaming can only get better from here, and so we keep our fingers crossed.