The CES exhibition in USA has just ended. Numerous well-known technological manufacturers exhibited products relevant to VR, such as HTC Vive, Sony PS VR, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus rift, and 3Glasses Blubur to name a few. This almost predicts the trend of VR in the future. According to an investigation into the global market by research institute TrendForce, the global market scale for VR will reach 70 billion USD by 2020. VR will become the new market that leads a new generation of game technology revolution.

In addition to VR, “HTML5 Games” are another form of rising new games. The development of HTML5 crosses the mainstream platforms for web page language such as PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, and so on. What’s more, many people have become users due to the prevalence of mobile internet and supportive devices.

According to official statistics from the 2015 HTML 5 moving ecology meeting, the number of HTML games users reached 171 million people. The expansion rate was 108.4% year on year. Platforms and developers including Facebook and LayaBox are now looking for business modes that would benefit from HTML 5.

Additionally, another issue worth noticing is the rise of “Independent Games,” and the expense that developers need to absorb alone in the process of developing new games. There are currently no resources privately offered by game companies or game manufacturers. In contrast, the manufacturers can decide the direction of the games on their own; however, Independent Games tend to appear more creative and innovative in their design.

Take Taiwan as an example, there are currently hundreds of independent work teams or offices such as TEAN SIGNAL which is the developing team behind “OPUS Earth Plan”, IndieCade, which won the prize of International Independent Games award in USA, and “Digital Crafter”, which develops mini games on smart phones; all of these independent game houses are now the more famous developers in Taiwan.

For the arcade games industry, how to combine VR technology with the existing products and create new game characters is becoming an important issue to all manufacturers. Meanwhile, such manufacturers should pay attention to the teams working on independent games, seek for cooperation with them, and develop more creative games together. Under such a new development trend, manufacturers absolutely cannot ignore this issue, otherwise, arcade games might be defeated by the evolution of technology in this era with a diversity of amusement activities.