For experienced gamers, specifying high-performance hardware equipment is essential to ensure a perfect gaming experience. As the scale of the game industry grows larger and larger, in order to improve game playability and retain users, major game manufacturers have made higher and higher game quality. 3D image quality, realistic scenes, gameplay upgrades, and content expansion have become commonplace. If players want to obtain a high-quality gaming experience, whether on mobile phones or PCs, equipment upgrades and iterations are an unavoidable problem. When the chicken-fighting game first emerged, many League of Legends players switched gaming positions, and the original smooth mobile phone configuration instantly became stretched.
The concept of cloud gaming was born to solve the contradictory needs of players who want to play games without having to replace expensive hardware equipment. Currently, the more mainstream cloud gaming platforms are relatively mature in terms of game content and player experience, such as Tencent START, NetEase Cloud Games, Gelai Cloud Games, Migu Kuaiyou, Mushroom Cloud Games, etc. Although major domestic Internet companies are optimistic about cloud gaming, the vast majority of gamers do not buy it. Is cloud gaming really not popular, or is it impossible to become popular at all?
According to a report released by the data analysis platform Newzoo, the market size of cloud games has reached US$671 million in 2020, and will grow to US$1.5 billion in 2021, more than doubling. According to predictions, the market size of cloud gaming will soar to US$4.255 billion by 2023.
Looking at another set of data, the "In-depth Observation and Trend Analysis of the Global Cloud Gaming Industry in 2022" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and IDC shows that China's cloud gaming market will exceed 7.92 billion yuan in 2022, compared with the same period in 2021. With an increase of 95.1%, the market share of cloud games is about to usher in a new explosive turning point.
The report predicts that by 2025, the number of monthly active users of cloud games in China is expected to reach about 250 million, and the corresponding market share will increase to 34.28 billion yuan.
Various data show that cloud gaming has actually become popular, but it is still unable to compete with mainstream gaming models. After all, the development of cloud games is not yet fully mature. The most fundamental reason is that in terms of game experience, the two major pain points of delay and lagging cannot be effectively solved. Although many platforms have a certain number of cloud games online, for players who have extremely high requirements for gaming experience, it is simply intolerable to experience lags during intense team battles or important scenes. Even Tencent, currently one of the top gaming companies in China, also said: From the perspective of pure "streaming" and "cloud migration", the technical threshold of cloud gaming is not high, but to fulfill the promise of cloud gaming to the industry and players, new technologies are still needed. , new scenes, new content and other directions.
Since the development prospects of cloud gaming are so broad, can we directly enter the era of cloud gaming as long as we increase the network speed to solve the problems of delay and lag? In fact, this is not the case. The key factor to break through the limitations of cloud gaming experience depends on the support of 5G technology, edge computing, cloud computing technology and other levels. What is certain is that if cloud gaming becomes mainstream in the future, it will not be achieved overnight by relying solely on the operations of game manufacturers.
The future development of cloud games will generally focus on two aspects: cloud gaming and cloud native gaming. At present, all major platforms have been involved in moving games to the cloud, and some mainstream games such as "Genshin Impact" have performed well. What needs to be solved is to further optimize the player experience. Cloud-native games are still a blank field, and most manufacturers are still in the open trial stage and wait-and-see mode. It is estimated that they will only make real efforts after achieving key technological breakthroughs and successful model verification.
It is worth noting that not only major game manufacturers and cloud computing platforms are working hard in the field of cloud gaming, but also some emerging cloud computing service providers are gearing up to enter the game at the level of cloud computing technology research and development and infrastructure deployment to pave the way for the development of cloud gaming. New blood was injected. For example, Shenzhen Cloud Future Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on the research and development of software and hardware in the two areas of cloud gaming and cloud-native gaming. Based on the full-stack self-developed core ARM cloud computing technology and server products, it provides one-stop services for application optimization and rapid deployment for the development of cloud gaming business.
Judging from the current layout of major game companies and data analysis by professional organizations, it is a general trend for cloud games to become the mainstream of future game forms. As technology advances and businesses continue to mature, it will become the norm to play AAA game masterpieces without high-end equipment, and cloud-native games, a new game model and content, will bring us different surprises. Technology is developing at a rapid pace. Maybe this day will come sooner than imagined. I look forward to seeing you and me in the cloud game.