In the last twenty-odd years, gaming’s popularity has exploded exponentially. Powerful hardware and mobile technology have seen ever-increasing amounts of investment as games become billion-dollar concerns.
Some of these figures are staggering; the worldwide gaming market was estimated at almost 347 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. The vast majority of this revenue came from mobile gaming, which alone was worth an enormous 248 billion.
It’s also fair to say that a vast proportion of this revenue came from online casinos, around 63.5 billion in 2022, which is predicted to hit over 105 billion by the year’s end.
Slots are the biggest contributor to the online casino economy. Games like Rainbow Riches Casino offering free spins have had the biggest impact on the industry.
And to think that these figures may well look like chicken feed in a decade or so… There is no question 2024 looks like an exciting one for online casinos, but it would seem that other online games are also preparing themselves for a bumper year.
One of the main reasons for this is the number of ways to play. The Xbox and PS4 have been joined in relatively recent times by the Nintendo Switch and PS5 without wholly usurping the former generation.
And that’s before we’ve even touched on the world of gaming laptops and, of course, your smartphone. Competition, then, is rife and it would seem that there is limitless investment available to get games off the page and into our hands.
So, what’s going to be hot for early 2024?
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, (PC, Xbox Series X/S)
It may come as no surprise that some of these games were already hot in 2023, but for one reason or another, were delayed -but remained hot. Take S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, now in its fourth incarnation, despite the misleading ‘2’.
Here the ‘2’ denotes a return to Chornobyl for some more encounters with radioactively compromised beasts. The takeaway element is that it’s being developed by Unreal Engine 5, so expect outstanding graphics and ray-tracing -you can look that up yourself.
We’ll leave you with this thought. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: is one of those games that keeps PS fans awake at night…
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC)
Then, of course, some games are hot by proxy, such as Metal Gear Solid 3, because the other ones were so good… But hang on, didn’t this game come out twenty years ago?
It did indeed, the 2024 version is a much-anticipated remastering of the 2004 banger making it 18th in the long-running franchise. Frustratingly details are still sketchy as to what to expect -outside of knowing exactly what to expect plot-wise, but we’re already terribly excited.
Skull and Bones (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Amazon Luna, and PC)
This isn’t a remake; we have a release date of 16th February… And it’s on all the top platforms. Okay, it’s a bit of an unknown quantity but we have pirates misbehaving on the open seas, so go figure.
If that’s not enough to tickle your fancy, virtually everything in the game is trying to do you in, including weird sea monsters. Yeah, we’ll have some of that.
