Why, overnight, from BAT to Huawei, from telecom operators to mobile phone manufacturers, everyone started talking about cloud games?
One, cloud game fires
The 5G era is coming, what is the first killer app? Some people say that it is a cloud game.
On March 20th, Google announced a high-profile launch of the cloud game platform stadia, “Sports Punk 2077” and other dozens of masterpieces to determine landing, and once pushed the cloud game to the cusp. Prior to this, Microsoft also launched the Xcloud program, which, like Google, will be strategically placed in the cloud gaming space.
Back to history, the service provider onlive, who first sang the concept of the cloud game, got up early, but didn’t even support the evening set. After several twists and turns, it was eventually acquired by Sony. At that time, the concept of cloud games was too “advanced” and neither hardware nor software conditions were available.
But now, the timing seems to be coming. The construction and trial commercialization of 5G networks is in full swing around the world. The 5G network with more than 100 times the speed of 4G network and ultra-low latency seems to boost the overall development and popularity of cloud games.
From the World Mobile Communications Conference to the China International Digital Entertainment Industry Conference to the CJ stage, exhibitors have created cloud gaming zones and ambitiously announced their operational plans:
In the hardware field, NVIDIA launched a savvy graphics card that adapts to cloud terminals, allowing cloud-based reality of high-end games to land. The company and Softbank have begun to deploy cloud game servers.
Communication field, Huawei Cloud announced the eight gold medal services around cloud games, and operators such as Telecom, China Unicom and Mobile (MiM) also launched 5G cloud game solutions.
In the Internet field, Tencent, known as the “domestic first game empire”, demonstrated a number of cloud games on the CJ. At the same time, according to the “Three Voices” report, Tencent released three cloud game platforms. In the IEG interactive entertainment business group, the START Innovation Product Center was established, and the sword refers to the cloud game. Interestingly, Tencent recently invested in the cloud game startup Dalongyun computer, which is very similar to their practice in the field of live broadcasting, doing penguin esports, fighting fish and tiger teeth, a two-pronged approach.
Even Shunwang Technology, which has long-term business operations related to Internet cafes, has also launched the latest “cloud box” solution for cloud game upgrades for Internet cafe owners.
Why did everyone start talking about cloud games from BAT to Huawei, from telecom operators to mobile phone manufacturers overnight?
Before setting a Flag here: For the upcoming 5G, cloud games are an important topic that all businesses can’t avoid. Ignoring cloud games, just like the Internet era, when I ignored “Legend” and the mobile Internet era, I ignored the “Three Kingdoms”.
After all, 5G, it is likely to be “cloud networking” first.
Second, not pseudo-demand
In the past two years, from O2O to shared bicycles, from some artificial intelligence shouldThe use of blockchain, for many “innovative” products, a common problem is: only emphasize the originality of their own technology and models, emphasizing their own technologically advanced “indicators”, while ignoring specific application scenarios and market conditions The result is that in order to purely tell the pseudo-demand of the story, there is a hammer that can’t find a good nail, and can’t solve any problems in the real world.
But the cloud game is not like this. He solves the problem of realism, and the pain point is too clear.
The players who grew up with computer games know that if you want to enjoy the real masterpiece, the configuration of the machine must not be low, but the high-profile computer and the next-generation consoles are too expensive, like today’s top. The alien tens of thousands of dollars in the price of alien computers has become a “harvester” for ashes players.
You will forget it. Even if you really buy such a top-end luxury machine, portability is also a problem. You can’t carry a set of hosts to run around. It’s impossible to play anytime, anywhere.
But the emergence of cloud game technology, all these problems will become history, all the performance and computing power is concentrated in the cloud, as long as you can use a 5G network connection to use any computer screen, mobile phone, tablet and other screen login calls anytime, anywhere. Cloud high-performance host, there is no delay in the use of the process… This is not a revolution for the game industry and players, and the gold-plated money terminal will become history.
And without mentioning any new web technology applications, the first thing that fires up is games and porn. Just completely eliminating the terminal threshold (price, portability), it is possible to completely reshape the face of the game industry, and people’s daily lives.
Terminal cost has always been the core of restricting the popularization and popularization of high-quality games. According to nvidia statistics, there are currently about 1 billion computers in the world that are not enough to run large games. This is a huge market vacancy.
But once the cloud game era arrives, the terminal cost will disappear completely. When the top game can be acquired at the same time and anywhere as the shared bicycle, this will be a brand new era.
According to the statistics of CITIC Construction Investment, the total market size of domestic game books, game consoles and Internet cafes has reached 77.243 billion yuan, and this part of consumption can be replaced by cloud games in the future. This is just a stock replacement.
As a reference, according to statista data, the current global cloud game market is about $97 million, and by 2023 this number is expected to grow to $4.5 trillion.
Why is it so popular that cloud games are so popular? How long is the real popularity?
Investing or starting a business, a key element is the “time.” So, is the timing of the cloud game really coming?
Three, the pain point of cloud games
Cloud games are going to get up, a few core diseasesThe knot must be resolved:
1, bandwidth problem. For cloud games to run smoothly, stable network speeds, high-definition picture quality, and negligible delays are indispensable, but it is clear that 4G networks do not have this condition at all. According to the statistics of online game mobile games in the 4G period, the user’s delay tolerance line for live broadcast is between 200 milliseconds and 2 seconds, but the delay tolerance line for the game is less than 50 milliseconds, which is difficult to stabilize even for wifi. Imagine that you are fighting chickens and guns, can you afford a delay at a critical moment?
2, traffic charges. In 4G mode, the traffic of playing cloud games every hour is about 1G, which is equivalent to HD video. Such consumption of ordinary players can’t imagine. So, is 5G+ edge calculation (shared computing power) a good solution?
3, technical threshold. Cloud games rely not only on the high speed of the network, but also on the high performance of cloud computing. The CDN technology often used in network video is useless here, because cloud games are not like live broadcasts, just use streaming technology to guarantee the video playback experience. His core is “interaction”, which requires a lot of virtualization technology. (Desktop virtualization, application virtualization), the large-scale use of this technology on the Internet will be a new challenge. Once the user surges, how to do the load balancing of cloud computing is particularly important, otherwise the cloud game system will not stand the toss of many people.
4. Game copyright. In response to Google’s cloud game strategy, Microsoft, Sony and other big companies have begun to build copyright barriers. If the headpieces are exclusively occupied, then even if the cloud game is revolutionary, it will suffer from lack of content and the lack of content.
5, platform constraints. Apple has a natural hostility to the rising cloud game, thinking that this may affect the revenue of its own application store, various restrictions and downfalls come at any time, before the local game streaming application like SteamLink was violated by Apple Removed from the shelf.
It must be pointed out that although the advancement of 5G is inspiring, 5G itself is not a panacea. Specific to cloud games, 5G only solves the problem of bandwidth and delay from the terminal to the base station, but it cannot solve the bandwidth problem of the backbone network. So the question is, is it to continue to expand the bandwidth of the backbone network, or to enhance the deployment of edge nodes and vigorously promote edge computing? This issue is very similar to the problem when video sites became popular in the past.
Bandwidth, tariffs, cloud computing technology, game copyright, four big mountains in front, ideally full of cloud games can not be achieved overnight, the popularity of 5G is only a fuse, the real deflagration requires the chemical reaction of the entire system, It is the comprehensive maturity and technology upgrade of various equipments in the entire industrial chain at the edge of the cloud.
Of course, the problem never stops the strategic hunger for historical opportunities. The game of cloud games is quietly rising. Whether it is a big factory or a small and medium-sized entrepreneur, they have already focused on this cake.