If you’re an avid gamer, then you’ll know that the gaming industry is at the forefront of the latest tech trends.

As a global market worth an estimated $175 billion, it’s one of the first places that innovators go to sell their new ideas in the hope that gaming developers embrace them for their new projects.

2022 has already been a lively year. Talk of a web-3 metaverse is growing, while AI and VR-based tools are helping to enhance the gaming experience.

Here are some of the most important innovations set to make waves this year and beyond.

Cloud gaming

Most of us are familiar with the concept of cloud gaming, or gaming-as-a-service — online gaming that runs on a remote server, or cloud — but 2022 may be the year when we see it truly hit the mainstream.

Google Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming have all tried to come up with a winning formula, but expensive subscriptions and a lack of gamer enthusiasm have held them back.

Stadia moving its backend to a white-label service, however, may be the game changer. It would give publishers the chance to launch their own cloud services for their gaming stock, improving ease of access for fans.

Handy promos, too, like Xbox making Fortnite free to play via its cloud — not to mention its Series X/S and One consoles now being cloud-compatible — will help whip up momentum.

NFT and blockchain

NFTs shot to fame in 2021 when artist Beeple sold his artwork for $21 million, an amount that makes many lottery jackpots look small.

However, the story deflected attention away from what NFTs – and the blockchain tech that it runs on – can bring to gaming technology.

Blockchain games have actually been around since 2018 when Sky Mavis’s Axie Infinity introduced its NFT-based in-game economy. Since then, live games like Thetan Arena and Upland have taken it further: in the latter, for example, you can own in-game properties that are NFTs you can trade with other players.

Now, games like Highrise have plans to create a metaverse of player-owned NFT lands, where users can generate and monetize their own content to share and trade with others.

Even Snoop Dogg is in on the act. Earlier this year, he created his own ‘Snoopverse’ via the Sandbox platform where players could buy their own properties. One avid fan even paid $450,000 to be the rapper’s neighbor in his virtual world. Additionally, Web3 Gaming is giving users more say in how their favorite games grow and evolve.

More handheld devices

We might be about to see portable PC gaming become big business. Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC, was set for a pioneering launch in 2021, but was instead delayed until this year.

While reviews have been average, it’s opened the floodgates for other handheld challengers. The Analogue Pocket lets you play all your classic Game Boy and Game Gear games on one device, while Playdate has the capacity to store a huge collection of games.

The biggest challenge, however, will be whether new handhelds can take on the might of Qualcomm’s new custom mobile chip, built specifically for on-the-go gaming. Android-powered gaming consoles may just be the next big step.

Mouth Haptics

One of the hallmarks of the metaverse is that gaming looks, and feels, as real as possible. Mouth haptics is one product of this: to sum up, it’s a device attached to a VR headset that’s designed to mimic sensations around the mouth.

But what could this mean for gaming? Well, imagine playing an adventure game and interacting with various objects in the virtual world: this might mean feeling the sensation of drinking water from a fountain, or even having insects crawl into your mouth.

The technology works via a grid of ultrasonic transducers fitted into the haptic device that produce frequencies focussed enough to create pressure sensations on the skin. The nerves around the mouth are particularly sensitive, making mouth a perfect target for researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Mouth haptics, however, is still a work in progress. Several of the volunteers in the researchers’ test group didn’t feel anything, and creators have admitted that there is still a way to go. However, the end of 2022 might be the time we see trial versions available in games, which would add a whole new dimension to some of our favorite titles!

So, which innovation are you looking forward to the most? Having your own portable PC or feeling virtual spiders crawl around your mouth? Well, 2022 might just be the year you get to find out.