The Coronavirus Global Pandemic has not only been awful for the general population, but also for other economic industries. Although the gaming industry is considered as one of the least affected ones, the pandemic has surely impacted it as well. This resulted in scenarios like cancellation of trade events, alteration of plans, restricted quality testing, and many others.

Besides, be it game apps for learning or video games, the development process of these got affected as well. As both the retail store and the physical products had to be halted for the lockdown. Similarly, there were various other means by which the industry got hit positively like sales and purchases, that has increased precisely. To discuss the topic in a detailed way, we have come up with 5 ways by which coronavirus pandemic has impacted the gaming industry

Hardware Production

Amid the current situation, there is no doubt that the hardware production is pretty less as per the demands of the games. As a result, this has caused limited supply as well as the refusal of components. Keeping such factors in mind, numerous popular organizations across the world are scaling back. This has lead to a decline in the game production or delay in the initial release of the game. Even mobile game companies got influenced by the same. Hence, the pandemic has surely affected the hardware production resulting in such situations.

Sales

There are certain areas where the pandemic played a positive impact on the industry. Talking about the sales of games, as people are being asked to stay quarantined at their respective homes, many are opting for games as a pass time. This has surely increased the sales of many games and a lot of them are becoming top-paid apps in the app store. Besides, people are playing games that have physical activity conjugated with it. Usually. because the lockdown has restricted fitness freaks to step out of their homes and they are finding modes to stay fit. This has enhanced the game development business for such fields as well.

Closing of Retail Shops

With the government’s stay at home order, retail shops had to shut as well. The companies that decided to keep such stores open amid the crisis were highly discouraged and had to face criticism for their behavior. This resulted in complete closure of most of these stores except the ones that take delivery and by-phone orders. Shutting of retail stores has been another significant impact on the gaming industry.

Esports or Game Competition

Esports or electronic sports is a competition of video game players that happens in a particular place for lesser network latency and a better audience. It’s quite obvious that a crisis that calls for social distancing would certainly not let this happen as well. Thus, most of these events got canceled or recreated as an online format. This means, instead of mass gathering, gamers would have to compete from their respective homes. Besides, many got postponed or rescheduled to some other date.

Increased Use of Mobile Games

With awesome game development services of the companies, mobile games have become quite a hit among people. Many organizations saw a surge in the interest of users in their games. That’s because mobile games are easy to play and quite addicting too. While people are locked down at their respective homes, these are considered quite an efficient mode of pass time. People are also opting for it to take some break from their official work as well.

Conclusion: We can conclude that the effect of the pandemic on the gaming industry is mixed. While there are some areas with positive effects, many others got hit adversely. However, be it a video game or mobile game development company, they have rendered us with outstanding games to play indoors and stay safe. It can be stated that the gaming industry is not completely immune to the virus and its effect can only be determined in the future.