Casinos make the shift into the virtual world

Online casinos have been part of the gambling world for a long time now. Some of the earliest sites have been around for over two decades, which in terms of the internet makes them practically ancient. However, it looks as though there are moves taking place that could change the casino landscape forever. We’ve taken a look at them and try to explain why they could have a huge effect on how casinos are used.

Land-based casinos go online

The first steps that casinos are taking into the virtual world originate mainly in the USA. Here, online gambling has long been illegal and therefore there weren’t any legitimate, big-name casinos available to play at. That changed recently with online gambling being made legal in the majority of states, while those states where it’s not yet legal will no doubt look to be changing that very soon. This, of course, has made it much easier for US-based players to play at online casinos. Because players now have access to fast payouts and high-level user experiences from the best UK based casinos, this has obviously triggered a spike in gambling revenue within the country.

What has happened to cause this is that most of the land-based casinos within the country now have their own online portals. This means that each day the casino has access to a significantly higher number of players than it would have had previously. The online portal for the land-based casino now means that the casino can effectively create revenue 24 hours a day, even if there is no one actually in the casino itself.

While it’s extremely unlikely, it also means that actual real-life visitors to the site could potentially dwindle as more players choose to play online. This offers the potential for casinos within the US to go fully virtual if this becomes a cost-effective way to operate. It’s obviously an unlikely scenario, as the brick-and-mortar casino offers much more than just gambling to players, whereas an online casino only has this to offer.

The shift to virtual gambling is available almost across the whole world, with even countries that are fervently against gambling offering the opportunity in some small territories to citizens. This is just the first part of the shift to the virtual world for casinos, though.

Virtual reality casinos

This is something that has been looking more likely with each passing year. Virtual reality has become much more of a viable product over the last few years, especially with the introduction of the Oculus Rift. However, this isn’t the sole innovation that has made a truly virtual reality casino look more likely recently. In fact, it might shock you to find out that cryptocurrency plays a big part.

This started mainly with a few VR games being developed for online casinos. There are some that have an AI-controlled dealer in place and Evolution Gaming created a number of first-person, live dealer casino games as well. All of this showed users that VR is a viable way to create casino games that can offer an extremely immersive experience.

This caused people to talk about the possibility of creating a fully VR casino. It would have rooms just like a brick-and-mortar casino, and would allow players to move from place to place and even interact with other players in a VR setting. However, it was always put aside as a pipe dream due to the huge amounts of bandwidth that this would require. Then along came the blockchain.

When the blockchain was shown to be more than just a way to create decentralised finance, it got people talking and thinking. If the blockchain could be used to host virtual real estate then perhaps a VR casino could be hosted there. It would allow players to travel between the different areas of the casino and would have the added bonus of allowing whichever token was associated with the blockchain as a payment method.

This could provide a solution to all of the issues surrounding the creation of a VR casino. Of course, when blockchain-based games started to be created, this just compounded the belief that it was possible.

While it’s not likely to take place within the next two or three years, there’s a strong possibility that we could see a completely VR online casino within the next five to 10 years. This would totally change the game for online gambling and could potentially see gambling move completely virtual by the time we enter the 2030s.