It is part of life that once something receives attention it’ll change. The online casino industry is no different. In the last year, Ireland has turned to them in droves. As they are, online casinos are an appealing product. Since the 1990s, when first started to appear as the internet started to become commercialised, as industries began to notice the perks of moving from their land-based forms to digital, online casinos’ main perk is their accessibility, their convenience.
It alleviates the need for gamers to travel, which, for a host of reasons, can be beneficial. Secondly, games can be played at their own speed, especially games which aren’t multiplayer. Everything about online casinos is personal, further evidenced by the abundance of bonuses available so boost bankrolls, a chance to win higher payouts than on brick-and-mortar casino machines, the options to pick a lower betting limit, the chance to pick from a huge variety of games, and being able to head to new casinos within seconds.
The surge of players, as mentioned, will lead to development. It always does. For some it’s a blessing and others, a curse. In the case of online casinos, they are working off of a hugely successful and functional foundation. Using sites like OLBG, who act as a comparison site for online casinos, it’s made clear to gamers that key differences between competitors are in the bonuses, the loyalty/VIP schemes, and the choices of games. It’s about what the casinos offer rather than what the casinos are. They do exactly what they need to do. It’s a formula which has been successful. Because of this, they won’t face drastic changes, so those stalwarts of the industry needn’t worry that their favourite site will become unrecognisable. The essence will be present. But, for those interested in what the industry might become at its margins, where it might be headed: what is there?
.
More and Improved Mobile Options
A simple place to begin is with the advancement and improvement of established products. New technical developments mean that popular games and platforms get their kinks ironed out and efficiency boosted too. Not only this but better hardware will contribute to a better experience for the customer. Websites and apps are optimised for mobiles, and there can be discrepancy between a desktop version of the site and a mobile one, for a few online casinos. However, as hardware improves, this difference should reduce.
While 5G’s rollout in the wider world has been slow, it is available in Galway. The technology in general provides a means of breaking beyond existing limits. Faster download speeds and lower latency will enable customers to have smoother play and, also, better accessibility to sites. This is especially true of live casinos – a game which involves real, human dealers and live chat rooms for roulette or poker – so the video quality is high.
Game Diversity
Another benefit of 5G delimiting developers is that they are now free to experiment with a wider variety of games now. Edge computing, which shifts the responsibility of rendering a game to remote servers, meaning that the gameplay is “streamed” to devices, much like what can be achieved with PlayStations and Xboxes now, relieving them of processing the games and leaving them to connect and play, improving efficiency and quality, will help with this.
Casino games tend to be traditional. It’s roulette, slots, and poker, with scratch cards and bingo as additions. All the ones you’d expect. However, this liberation, and increased focus and potential opportunities given to them, maybe gives developers impetus to experiment, and see what gambling games of tomorrow might be.
Blockchain Casinos
Blockchain is an increasingly common word in headlines and news reports globally. It is the technology which underpins cryptocurrency – examples of which are bitcoin, Ethereum, and dogecoin – that also has applications for online casinos.
For those that aren’t familiar, blockchain is essentially a ledger. It’s a means of storing information in a way which is very difficult to change, hack, or fool. Blocks consist of data of any sort. Let’s use an example of a transaction. So, a block has details of who has sent money, who is receiving money, and how much. The block seals itself with a fingerprint and stores the fingerprint of the previous block in the chain within itself too. If a block is edited, its fingerprint changes, which then affects the rest of the chain after it, voiding the chain, because the block after’s details of the block before’s fingerprint no longer matches. Making any meddling immediately notable and impossible to hide.
The transaction is completed by a network of peer-to-peer computers which solve an equation to validate it, begun once the transaction is submitted. This network of computers doesn’t belong to a company or any authority. It is decentralized. The idea is that blockchain is both secure and transparent (though the names assigned to the block are pseudonymous ). Anyone can see the ledger and what’s going on.
Blockchains application in the online casino industry is as blockchain itself and in cryptocurrency.
While online casinos have to adhere to rigorous checks to ensure fairness, the transparency which blockchain affords could be attractive for many gamers. Not only that but smart contracts, an application of blockchains, can ensure that winnings are paid out fully and immediately without either party having the ability to void or query it. Finally, there’s security, which has obvious benefits for the industry.
Cryptocurrency offers gamers the ability to bet with small units of currency, utilise pseudonymity, make use of fast transactions, and secure themselves.
AR and VR
Augmented reality and virtual reality will revolutionise immersion for gamers, within online casino and PC/console gaming. AR – which uses your existing surroundings as a map to impose the programme on – will be, most likely, a new means of interfacing with the casino as well as 2D games. It may not affect how the games themselves function too much, but it will affect the perception and interaction with them.
VR, though, is the most exciting advancement for gaming in recent times. It promises and is delivering new levels of total immersion. Live casinos, for instance, will and are benefiting. Gamers can sit at a table, facing, in a 3D environment, the dealer’s and other players’ avatars. This is also another piece of technology which liberates developers from existing limits and could push them to experiment with new game formats.
Online casino, despite its established and working format, is on the edge of a number of exciting changes which could further its growth as an industry.
