The iGaming market is one that continues to grow with each passing year. In large part that is down to the fact that it is in tune with changing consumer interests at a time when people are looking online for their entertainment to an ever-greater extent.
All areas of iGaming are thriving, including online casinos. Betting is a type of entertainment that bridges the old and new worlds, but in the latter most of it is happening on the internet.
It is there that younger people are heading to play slots and Texas Holdem poker now, but casino sites must stay in touch with what people want to remain successful. This article will examine what the future trends are likely to be for online casinos.
Virtual Reality
This technology has been hovering around on the fringes of the gaming world for years now, but it appears finally ready to enter the mainstream. Virtual reality tech creates an entirely digital environment that is immersive and that users can interact with to the extent that the real-world is simulated with absolute accuracy.
There are already virtual reality headsets and games on the market, but it is expected to become part of the online casino offer very soon. It is a genuinely revolutionary development in gaming and will offer radically different and exciting experiences for casino players.
Virtual reality tech could make it possible to simulate playing slot machines or poker in a luxury Monte Carlo or Las Vegas casino – or even on the moon – from the comfort of your own bedroom. Online casinos have worked hard to recreate the atmosphere of the land-based gambling experience in recent years, but this technology would enable them to comprehensively simulate it.
It will create utterly immersive online gaming environments for users of the casino sites, further enhancing the play, and seems certain to be a game-changer for the iGaming market as a whole.
Artificial Intelligence
Most of the future casino trends are towards the adoption of new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) is another of these. Some people are wary of this particular technology, but it is likely to become ever-more central to the operations of online casinos.
One way in which they are beginning to make use of it is by providing AI chat bots to deal with simple customer enquiries. These enable customers to connect to help immediately, with more difficult queries being passed on to human members of the service team.
It is that replacement of human beings with AI that worries a lot of people and one possible effect of its widespread adoption could be redundancies within the iGaming sector. Ultimately there is still a limit to how much help AI bots can provide gamers with though and most eventually need a real person to help resolve problems.
A second way in which AI is being deployed already by casino sites is in storing data concerning the way every customer interacts with the site. That data is then used to personalise the experience for each one by highlighting games they are likely to enjoy.
Finally, AI could prove a useful way to pick up on fraud and the trend is towards casino sites using it to beef up security, which will obviously be of benefit to their customers.
Mobile Casino
This is already a thing, but we could see it displace computer casino gaming before very much longer. It has been a growing market for years and casino providers certainly see it as the future.
They are investing more money in their mobile apps and platforms and customers expect more from them now. The sites are switching to HTML5 that enables them to be optimised easily for the smaller mobile screens and more games are being added to mobile casino apps all the time.
Mobile gaming has the benefit for players of even greater portability and convenience and it is having the effect of making iGaming more popular with new demographics. Women in particular are enthusiastic mobile gamers and the shift towards it is opening the industry out by making it more inclusive.
Live Casino
Live casino involves people linking up with human dealers and rival players using a video stream and it is becoming more and more popular at casino sites. Games such as poker and blackjack in particular are enhanced by being able to see the dealer and other players and it is rapidly supplanting the purely digital table games among online casino users.
If you can provide the comfort and convenience of online gaming but with the atmosphere and human contact of land-based play, people are likely to embrace that combination.
These changes will be accompanied by new security and payment options, including greater adoption of e-wallets for processing casino payments.
