The Revolution that AR Tech can bring to the Gaming Industry

The Augmented Reality Market Forecast, according to IDC, was estimated to reach $27 billion in 2018, a 92% increase year over year, while the expected CAGR 2017–2022 is 72%. Largely due to the current rate at which it is used on smartphones, augmented reality is expected to reach billions of users in the coming years. This must be one of a kind tech revolution.

With successful use cases in military, healthcare, ecommerce and many others, augmented reality is set to take the world by storm, fueling traditional business models, and adjusting them with better interactive tools to work with. One of such industry that has experienced a fair share of this is the gaming industry.

The fascinating Pokémon GO game which represents one of our earliest encounters with AR in gaming, from the time of its launch in July of 2016, according to Guiness world records, has proven to be an AR sensation, generating $207 million in revenue its first month (first in history) and reaching a peak of 45 million daily users worldwide. Pokémon GO was estimated to have earned nearly $800 million in 2018 according to SuperData. Whooping, huh?

In addition, as at September, 2018, the augmented reality Pokémon GO game has recorded a staggering download of up to one billion, which equates to about 14% of the world’s population (source: Business of Apps).

The above statistics can only tell us how much revolution AR Tech can bring to the gaming industry, triggering massive adoption, and eking out huge returns in earnings as profit in the near future. With 75% of the world’s population owning a cell phone, according to Mobile Marketing Association Asia, and approximately 14% of the world’s population already having a taste of an AR game, the value AR tech is bringing to the gaming industry is just at its inception.