Different gaming platforms’ dominance in Esports

Whereas traditional sports contain many different types of sports, like football and basketball, on different stadiums around the world, esports can be played and watched on any continent and any device; each console, pc or mobile game is different; and esports players don’t even need to be on the same continent to play together.

The esports industry is becoming popular and gathering attention due to its incredibly growth throughout the pandemic, which has seemed to sustain itself. According to research from FindBettingSites, the market is set to grow to $2.9 billion in revenue in 2025, up from just $1.9 billion in 2019, and has been breaking viewership and prize pool records year on year, with incredibly surges in viewership and online betting figures in the pandemic specifically.

What is unique and interesting in regard to the esports industry is how different it is across its different mediums, that is the different platforms on which video games are played. Consoles, PC and mobile (as the main three platforms) are incredibly varied in the games which are popular and make up the ‘esports’ industry. Although there are some games which are popular across all platforms, this tends to be seen in relatively short-lived surges or attention and hype, as opposed to the actual games which, year on year, are the staple brands of esports for the given platform.

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Consoles video games in eSports
Consoles, like the Playstation and Xbox have long been the home for video games like Call of Duty, FIFA and Halo which have a worldwide audience for its tournaments and player content (youtube and content creators). The console is also where esports originated from, when students of Stanford University hosted the first ever esports tournament back in the 1980s.

Although consoles cannot compete with PC in some areas of esports because of the much better hardware and software that PCs use, next gen consoles are making a big step forward in that regard. For example, next gen consoles like the PS5 have enabled players to get above the previous 60fps cap so that, both the player and viewer experiences can be dramatically improved.

PC video games in eSports
PC video games, like League of Legends and Dota 2 are by far the leaders in terms of eSport if looked at from the perspective of consoles. These games are consistently producing the most watched and lucrative video game tournaments. On the one hand, these games have a strong and solid community of gamers, as they have been around for some time and so they have had the time to mature and shift from just a game but to also a large source of entertainment and, in effect, a whole conglomerate enterprise.

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The earnings of the players on PC video games are also of a different caliber, as Dota 2 players consistently hold the titles for highest earners in the esports industry.

Mobile gaming in eSports
Mobile gaming is the newest form of mainstream gaming and has seen immense growth since its launch in around 2007, when the first iPhone launched. Because of this, video gaming on mobile is technically ‘the newest’ and so is esports on this platform. However, games like Clash Royale are becoming mobile gaming staples, and have been gathered a large audience for its competitive leagues.

For many platforms, especially mobile gaming, eSports have a large audience, and therefore a large amount of people’s attention. The next step is to properly monetize this audience and create a sustainable foundation for the future of esports on all platforms and the various games played in tournaments.