If you ask me, the more interesting question if the other way around. How important is VR to the Gambling and casino industry? Whatever way you want to see it I will try and put both sides of this in one post and leave people to make up their own minds…
How Important Is The Gambling Industry To VR?
Let us start with the title question. While there are many future implementations of VR in all industries the gambling industry has welcomed VR with open arms (or so it seems). With many Blackjack and slot apps already out there to play you might well be thinking the gambling industry is already well established in VR. But that is not the case! In fact, many of the big-name online casinos who are already well established have yet to get into the VR game. Just take a look at all the top-selling VR casino apps and you will discover most of them are unbranded, bedroom developer games. So while I do think online casinos and indeed the whole of the gambling industry does have a part to play in the future of VR, it has yet to embrace it fully.
How Important is VR to The Gambling Industry?
Now, this is something that will spark a debate, but it has to be said VR could make a lot of money for online casinos with various VR games, especially the table games. We have already seen apps like VR Pokerstars do really well in sales, so what will it take for the gambling industry to realise the future of their industry might well be in virtual reality? I think the payment side of things is one of the biggest issues. While you can obviously make micropayments in VR a new payment and account system will need to be set up. But the biggest thing holding back the bigger named casinos is the numbers. The lack of people using VR doesn’t make for a very good investment and despite what they do most big casino firms don’t like to gamble on the unknown. So they hold off, but I can see VR being a really big part of their future, especially with so many real-world casinos closing down. While I would like to see more casino and gambling apps in VR I am aware that it will take bigger numbers than VR currently has. But who knows what those numbers might be in just a few years!
As always, if you have any thoughts on this post or any others do let me know in the comments below.