Based on the premise of five questions, let’s take a look at the past, present and future of cloud games.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Tencent Institute” (ID: Cyberlawrc).
Just last week, Google announced the game lineup of its cloud game platform Stadia, including 12 games including Assassin’s Creed: Osset and Wilderness 2, which aroused the players and the industry.
2019, is the year of the hero’s bright sword cloud game. Not only Google, Microsoft and Sony have opened their own cloud game projects. The 17th ChinaJoy domestic big company competed to announce the cloud game platform, and global competition has become a puppet.
Why are big factories so urgent and intensive underground? What will happen to the cloud game in the future? To answer these questions, Tencent Research and IEG Cloud Game Team START, GameMatrix, Tencent Play and Tencent Game Academy jointly launched “Cloud Game Development and Trend Report: Future Strategic Fortress”.
Before understanding the strategic significance of cloud games, let’s answer five key questions about cloud games:
Question 1: What is a cloud game?
For users, there is no need to perform traditional downloads, installations, upgrades, etc., whether it is mobile games, end games or hosts, you can play it all at once, and you can achieve multi-end archiving and data sharing.
Question 2: Why is cloud gaming important?
Cloud games are an important technological revolution in the gaming industry.
He injects a powerful new gene into the game industry: hardware is no longer a beggar, and hosts, PCs, and mobile phones are all three. This will bring fundamental changes to the industry, and the player’s experience model and payment model are facing drastic changes, just as the rise of smart phones has brought the mobile game market that is now blooming. Changes in the game’s own mode will greatly expand the boundaries of the game’s innovation.
Question 3: How to develop cloud games?
Question 4: Why is it breaking now?
As with the AI industry, technology has matured.
The two major technical genres of cloud games are maturing:
The five core technologies are developed: Whether it is video streaming or instruction streaming, their core technologies are basically the same, and they are mainly divided into five areas: GPU, virtualization technology, audio and video decoding, high-quality network and Edge calculation. These technologies have all grown considerably in the last year or two.
Question 5: The impact of cloud games is not big?
has a very large impact on the industrial ecology and the main body of all parties.
One is to change the industrial ecology: There are three main changes: First, the hardware business will have weaker voice rights; second, the cloud service vendors with the underlying technology will become stronger; third, the content developers will continue to differentiate.
Figure: Cloud Game Ecosystem, Tencent Institute Drawing
The second is the impact of industry entities: publishers, game platforms, game developers and players are facing upgrades or changes.
Based on the above five questions, let’s take a look at the past, present and future of cloud games.
The past of cloud games
Really, cloud games have been around for less than 20 years since birth. In 2000, a Finnish game company called G-cluster showed its prototype on the E3, but it did not arouse any storms. Until 2009, a US game company, Onlive, launched the cloud game version of the Crysis crisis, which successfully attracted the attention of the big manufacturers, but the bad luck and the technology is not yet mature, and was acquired by Sony. Since then, Sony, NVIDIA, Microsoft and other major manufacturers have launched their own cloud game platform one by one, officially kicked off the global competition.
The current cloud game
The 19-year bumpy accumulation has now erupted.
I. Industry Status of Li Bing Lima
As of September 2019, according to incomplete statistics, there are 152 companies that have entered the cloud game worldwide. Among them, 35 cloud computing companies accounted for 23.03%. 29 software companies, accounting for 19.08%. There are only 11 hardware companies.
Hardware is an important track for cloud gaming technology. China’s current development in basic hardware is still relatively backward.
From the perspective of national distribution, the United States has an absolute advantage in the number of companies that enter the cloud game, reaching 75. There are 22 enterprises entering China, which is a large gap compared with the United States. However, the development of domestic 5G and cloud computing provides a good foundation and is expected to overtake.
Two, 30 cloud game platforms robbed of the opportunity to go out
The 152 cloud game entry companies have launched more than 30 cloud game/game streaming platforms. As of September 2019, according to incomplete statistics, there are 23 cloud game platforms and 7 game streaming media platforms worldwide. Overall, the operating platform’s requirements for end systems and hardware are difficult to unify, and less than full coverage of Windows, Mac, iOS and Android systems. Network demand is concentrated at 5-30 Mbps. Under the ideal network, the picture quality reaches the pass line.
Figure: Tencent Institute
Three, three sides of the big factory ambush, ten parties competed
At present, more than 10 giant companies around the world have joined the battle for the cloud gaming market. They compete around the underlying technology, content and distribution platforms. The “gold diamonds” of different families are different, and the strategic layout is also very different. Amazon, NVI and other technologies are based on existing cloud computing or hardware advantages. The game makers such as Valve and EA are centered on high-quality content, while Microsoft, Google and Tencent rely on the underlying technology, content and platform. The cloud game market launched a package.
The competition of cloud game platforms is mainly concentrated in three areas: one is the underlying technology; the other is the distribution platform; the third is high-quality content. Cloud computing technology is the cornerstone of cloud gaming. The number of platforms and channels determines who can take advantage of the cloud gaming market. In addition, the quality and quantity of the game is the biggest highlight to attract players, and the content advantage will become an important factor for sustainable development.
According to the layout of the big factories, the competition of enterprises can be divided into four modes: technology-oriented, content-oriented, strategic-assisted and comprehensive development.
The Future of Cloud Games
The user is looking forward to the market and the market is preparing for it.
But it’s still too early to make a full-scale outbreak of cloud games, and a lot of technical and facility issues need to be addressed. In addition, data security is the sword of Damocles hanging over the cloud gaming industry. Most importantly, the current subscription model of cloud games is far from the cost recovery, and the business model is still in its infancy, and it still needs to continue to explore.
The cloud engine and cloud server provide a broader and more stereoscopic stage for game development. New interaction methods and game types will emerge in the next few years, and users will be more violent than ever. From this perspective, cloud games will become a key position for future game industry competition. Native cloud games (games that can only run on cloud game platforms) will likely bring a new wave of users.
Whoever preempts the cloud game market, it is more likely to grasp the lifeblood of the game industry in the future. This is why cloud games are strategic future fortresses.
But the road is too long, the cloud game still needs 3-5 years of accumulation and development, but also the game market to find the way out.