Will Smart Glasses Take Over Gaming?
Smart glasses are slowly but surely permeating the market, with promising numbers for the industry’s future. Experts from Transparency Market Research predict that the global smart glass market will have a CAGR of 14.5% from 2021 to 2031.
These projections come from the baseline that smart glasses cater to more than a single niche. Different brands have focused on various features, enabling users to use glasses for productivity, social media, augmented reality, and even gaming. Gaming has been a trendy hobby in the last decade, particularly with the advent of live streaming in the past few years. The broader spread of such a smart product proves promising in the larger games industry.
Smart Glasses vs VR Headsets
The emergence of smart glasses is significant compared to virtual reality (VR) headsets. The gaming world is already heavily cluttered with peripherals deemed essential, bolstered by VR technology’s advancement. Today’s most popular VR headsets take the role of multiple devices and work in tandem with The Best Accessories For Gamers To Invest In. For instance, the Valve Index offers spatial audio that overtakes many premium headsets and uses intricate tracking stations to increase immersion.
What makes smart glasses different from VR headsets, however, is how you interact with the environment. In their current forms, smart glasses augment the environment around you, while VR headsets expose you to a virtual environment while blocking real-world elements from view. The potential for future iterations of the glasses comes from being able to replace monitors with crisp projection while providing a much more lightweight frame than the bulky default of even the smallest VR headset.
Smart glasses are already being primed to replace smartphones in specific settings, so it only makes sense that they would eventually be put on focus for immersive gaming. They are also less bulky and potentially more accessible for avid players. This type of eyewear has become a reality thanks to neural interface bands that Meta is already developing.
The future of live streaming
Although there are many gaming situations where smart glasses could make an impact, the most significant potential may lie in live streaming. A massive chunk of the market is all about streaming, with over 1.2 billion viewers for video game content worldwide. Twitch, the biggest streaming platform for video game players, hosts over 7.3 million channels that produce live content monthly.
The streaming scene has become highly competitive because of the vast pool of viewers and streamers. More emphasis must now be put on investing in the best equipment and standing out in a sea of others. This is where smart glasses could come in and create a massive shift.
The Ray-Ban smart glasses are already making waves in this arena, fully equipped to live stream directly to Facebook and Instagram using Meta View. Its hands-free live stream support would benefit gaming streamers, as it works for 30-minute intervals. While this period is still relatively short for the gaming industry (which commonly sees streams run for hours at a time), it’s already a lucrative jump-off point that will only improve in the next decade. Players could record short-form gaming content with these smart glasses, which may also be popular with their viewers.
Gaming on the go
Finally, the growth of smart glasses will likely coincide with the further rise of mobile gaming. Portable devices like the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch have their demographics down, and the larger gaming market (including casual players) is seeing a trend toward mobile devices built for demanding titles. The CAGR of the mobile games market is already at 6.39%, so the real clincher will be how brands bundle the two devices together.
People are already open to augmented reality and have embraced wearable technology, so augmented reality smart glasses combined with mobile devices could become the new standard for gaming in the coming years. More rudimentary augmented reality games have also enjoyed immense popularity, with titles like Pokemon Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite garnering peak player counts of over 250 million combined. With all these aspects coming into play, smart glasses taking over gaming may not be a question of ‘will’ but ‘when.’
