The Cloud's Impact on the Future of Gaming

August 1, 2019

A lot has changed since blowing air into Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) cartridges when games would lag or freeze (which, spoiler alert: apparently this doesn’t help at all and if anything can harm your game cartridges). There’s still a concern for latency and games freezing but now, it’s tied back to the cloud vs. the cartridge which has the potential to be even more frustrating to deal with. Fortunately, we’re in an era where advancements in cloud technology and data center services are able to make a seamless and enjoyable cloud gaming experience a reality.

With the shift from consoles to cloud-based gaming, user expectations have also shifted to expect higher quality, technology-driven, low latency, and on-demand games whenever and wherever gamers choose to play them.

As a data-heavy industry, gaming as a service relies on data center services that can process high-density workloads, especially within the cloud. The bar is set high among gamers, therefore gaming companies can’t afford to compromise on the tech infrastructure and cybersecurity of the gaming experiences that they deliver.

Just a few years ago, it may have seemed like a Netflix-like model for streaming video games was an unrealistic dream. But now, with large companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, and EA all doubling down on cloud gaming, it’s not a matter of if this will become a reality but how.

In our latest eBook, we explore the cloud’s impact on gaming as a service in the following ways:

• Reducing the burden of heavy computing
• Enforcing security protocols & data protection
• Alleviating financial burdens
• Scaling
• The roles edge computing and 5G play in cloud gaming