Smartphones and entertainment are synonymous these days, and that’s greatly down to the convenience of both the devices and the quick-access apps.
The surge of this tech has been rapid, with accessible mobile play only really coming into being 18 years ago.
Now, thanks to a concerted effort from developers, mobile apps and sites are the go-to ways to enjoy entertainment. So, in such a short time, here are the big steps that brought on-demand entertainment to our pockets.
Going Digital and Bringing Classic with them
At a time of Flash-powered browser entertainment and slow streaming, the first major players in a nascent sector for online gambling games are said to have launched in 1994.
For over a decade, developers launched browser-based slot games, creating hits that would later become classics.
These slots laid the foundations for the sector, now featured in their updated and more accessible forms among the collection of Betfair Vegas slots. 7s Deluxe, Cleopatra, Eye of Horus, and Da Vinci Diamonds are all legends of the space.
Each plays into the classic aesthetic and style of play that helped slots to establish themselves online as a popular form of entertainment.
Once mobile began to become a prominent form of access, games like these had to be adapted. It wasn’t enough to have clickable controls. Now, touch-screen controls were becoming increasingly essential, and for a time, some of these games were left behind the mobile-first releases.
Follow pioneers in online-based entertainment like Netflix had to make similar pivots, going from mail-order DVD rentals to online streaming to mobile-optimised streaming. The key to the transformation was the user interface.
It’s All Down to Apple’s Touchscreen
As is told by Zdnet, iPhone’s release marks one of the most influential changes to society in the 2000s to date.
While many innovations came out of Apple with this 2007 release, it was the touchscreen that would enable smartphones to become the most convenient and widely used devices for a whole range of entertainment options. It also greatly popularised the app, and later, in-app purchases.
Rather swiftly, mobile technology advanced to a point where it didn’t become restricting for developers at all.
However, this wasn’t wholly down to the little advances made by the likes of the iPhone with its annual releases. A big part was the improved potential of HTML game coding, which is a basic web protocol.
It used to be that Java was the go-to software for mobile and mobile apps. By 2016, Oracle killed Java as a browser plug-in. HTML5 has become the easiest and most wide-spanning way to publish software like video streaming platforms and slot games.
Its inherent benefit was that it supports mobile and PC browser access. With some tweaks to the user interface, entertainment made for online users was suddenly easily replicated across PC and mobile browsers as well as mobile apps.
What the Future Holds for Entertainment App Development
The buzzword of the day can’t be ignored here. Artificial intelligence is hailed as being a complete game-changer for any and all digital systems.
For entertainment app development, the application of increasingly sophisticated AI to more accurately personalise experiences and recommendations looks to be the way forward. Data harvested by AI will also help developers to home in on ways to improve apps and make them more effective and efficient.
Mobile entertainment is big business greatly thanks to the touchscreen, the bedrock created by Java, and HTML5’s advance on that. Going forward, AI looks to have a major role in the advancement of entertainment apps.