SuperOne and gaming - The new center of the internet?

Gaming is so much more than just the game — and massive growth is on the horizon By having a mobile gaming platform as the centerpiece of its product offering, SuperOne could really not be entering the sector at a better time. Just in the same way that search engines, mobile phones, and social networks have seized the initiative at different times this century to dominate technology, now is the time for gaming to be at the center of the internet.

Or at least those are the views of Michael Wolf, co-founder and chief executive of consulting firm Activate Inc, whose views have been widely reported across mainstream media, such as the Wall Street Journal, and on multiple tech blogs. Before taking a deeper look at Activate’s findings, let’s consider the circumstantial evidence.

Gaming has of late become a social pursuit, and even a socially acceptable one given the constraints imposed on people by the coronavirus pandemic. You can’t be much more socially distanced than when you’re alone in your bedroom playing FIFA against your best buddy from across town.

Truly, you’re never alone in a game; streaming platforms like Twitch allow you to share your personal ups and downs on League of Legends. Committed gamers are no-longer pasty-faced loners prone to acne with no real friends at school. Even the cool kids do it now.

Transcending the barriers

And your favorite gaming platform is, of course, transcending the barriers of what we formerly considered a game to comprise. Many have already completed the transformation into digital hubs that offer people an array of services once only possible in real life.

No wonder the overall time spent gaming has risen by 29% since March — and it can’t all be put down to pandemic restrictions. Here’s the angle that’s so prescient from a SuperOne perspective: “People are increasingly using gaming platforms to view virtual concerts, for messaging, gambling, dating and even virtual celebrations of weddings and birthdays,” Activate reports.

SuperOne too is also keen to use the game as only the start of the journey of engagement with its gamers, with a number of other projects in development such as social media, travel solutions, and financial services. Activate predicts the consumer gaming industry will reach a value of $198 billion by 2024, not including sales from hardware and devices, augmented reality, virtual reality, and advertising.

Gaming as a subscription service

An industry that once simply sold individual games now frequently monetizes its products through the subscription-as-a-service model — Alphabet, Google, Apple and Amazon are all at it, competing hard for market share against Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Research conducted by Activate found:

58% of gamers use or intend to use gaming subscription services
38% use or intend to use cloud gaming services
Most new users of VR headsets are buying them for gaming

It also made this bold prediction: that spending in the United States on AR and VR gaming will rise eightfold between now and 2024 to an annual $19.8 billion Gaming is also predicted to connect industries with a wave of mergers and acquisitions involving gaming and tech companies.

Hunting the ‘Super Users’

Activate’s next forecast will be music to the ears of those leading the expansion of SuperOne. “With increased competition, technology and media, companies must pay more attention to ‘super users,’ or the highest-engaged customers, who tend to skew younger, wealthier and more educated.”

Superusers typically:

Make up less than 25% of all consumers
Spend 1.5 times more time-consuming media than other users
Spend 3.5 times more on media purchases

These are the people all companies in gaming, big and small, need to capture for maximum reach. The way SuperOne will do, will be by having a massive sales force in place — 100,000 “Genesis Community” affiliate marketing professionals who will be incentivized to locate gamers and send them gaming credits.

Interestingly, Activate has also looked at fan engagement within sport, a massively important area of SuperOne’s growth strategy given.

(Many SuperOne games will be sports-focused, and the platform is built to leverage the partisan nature of sport.)

The rise of sports betting

Activate believes fan engagement with sports will be more “influenced by content consumed via virtual reality, live-streamed group watching and interactive sports betting.”

It continues: “Sports betting will begin to function like financial trading, including with real-time trading, pooled institutional money and media coverage.” (Some of this is already happening in more mature online betting markets like the UK).

“The amount wagered through sports betting in the US will reach $189 billion a year by 2024.” Finally, the gradual reduction of third-party cookies-tracking will transform the digital advertising industry, directly benefiting Facebook, Google, and Amazon who own so much of the customer data other companies seek. Not that it will pose any kind of a problem for SuperOne.

Far from it. SuperOne, by building its own network in advance of the game launch will have easy access to the first-party user data provided by its affiliate partners, and, by extension, its gamers too.