#1. Hardwired to VR World
The debut of Google Glass and then Oculus Rift kindled imagination of the gaming community and electronics manufacturers contending for the dominance in the entertainment field, and propelled the development of the virtual reality concept. The major players in hardcore gaming like Sony and Microsoft are joining this race polishing their VR/AR headsets — Project Morpheus and HoloLens — hoping to make these goggles loyal partners for their consoles. Oculus teams up with Samsung to showcase Gear VR, a headset that holds Galaxy Note 4 phones to create virtual reality experience.
The industry leaders like Razor, Leap Motion, Unity, Sixense and others push forward the trailblazing OSVR, an open-source virtual reality software/hardware platform dedicated to the video games realm.
There are also wild cards among the contenders, including the Virtux Omni that expands VR beyond head-mounted display to a treadmill, and the likes. What does it mean for the gaming community? …that game developers will be actively testing the waters of VR in gaming, and we’ll see more VR apps in the near future.
#2. Knocking on the Gamers’ Door
While freemium model still tops the list of classic game marketing strategies, and secures the lion’s share of revenue for many game developers, it’s getting harder for small indie studios to scrape through the top rankers of game production giants with their AAA titles that occupy leading positions in app stores. That’s why indie developers are set to invent new ways to get through to gamers and win some of their love.
One of such alternatives is to start from lite HTML game demos, easily accessible from mobile phones without being downloaded, with an option to then switch to native apps. This means users can test your game in a no-strings-attached mode, and then, if they like it, enjoy the native experience. This method proved to be efficient for some developers.
Another must-do and the nub for game marketers is to take advantage of social integration: leaderboards, achievement walls, and social sharing features are tried-and-true methods to woo more users. Whereas Twitch.tv and Plays.tv, where gamers chat and share gameplay videos of themselves in action, is even a more engaging form of social interaction.