Another "explosive" application in the 5G era, what is the future of cloud gaming?

What can 5G do? This is a question that everyone has been exploring in the past two years. On April 15, Baidu held an online press conference to show us its answer. It is reported that at the conference that day, Baidu released a "cloud phone" and focused on the "cloud game" application scenario. Baidu told us: "5G + cloud computing" will bring an unprecedented gaming experience.

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So, what is a "cloud phone"? What is "cloud gaming"?

Cloud phones move all applications on mobile phones to the cloud, with cloud servers providing computing and storage that were originally required of mobile terminals. In other words, they are mobile phones that are independent of hardware and operated with the help of the cloud. Cloud games, on the other hand, refer to gaming services where screen rendering, data storage, and numerical calculations are all performed by cloud computing servers, without requiring much involvement of local devices.

It is the emergence of cloud phones that has brought various mobile applications to the cloud, giving rise to cloud games. The birth of cloud games, on the one hand, allows large-scale games that originally required high-end devices to be played on mobile phones, and on the other hand, it also ensures that relevant data will not be lost after changing local devices. Therefore, cloud games can be said to have brought a new revolution to the current gaming industry.

In February this year, the head of Microsoft Games said in an interview that the competition for the next generation of gaming industry status will have nothing to do with hardware, but cloud gaming. It can be seen that cloud gaming has become the next outlet for the development of the gaming industry. It is understood that in addition to Baidu, Microsoft, Huawei, Amazon, etc. are all committed to cloud gaming. So in the future, will cloud gaming usher in an explosion?

In fact, the concept of "cloud gaming" is not new! As early as ten years ago, "cloud gaming" was already mentioned by people. At that time, investors believed that this was a vast market with a scale of billions; major game and live broadcast platform companies also believed that this was a new opportunity for development, so many companies have invested in it, making this concept instantly popular.

For example, at that time, the game live streaming platform Douyu launched its own cloud gaming platform and simultaneously launched dozens of cloud games, including "World of Warcraft", "Honor of Kings" and many other terminal games and mobile games. Players can play them easily on the platform without downloading them; in addition, iQiyi, Bilibili and others also followed suit, and cloud gaming once exploded in my country.

However, due to the poor initial player experience, the popularity of cloud gaming did not last. It is reported that many players encountered long queues, game lags and bugs when playing cloud gaming, which made them full of resistance. In addition, some players believe in playing games in traditional ways, and the development of cloud gaming ultimately did not meet the ideal expectations.

Many people in the industry believe that the reason is that the technology was not mature enough at the time, and the market environment was not created. For cloud games, being separated from the hardware foundation means that it needs to have faster computing speeds, larger storage space, and smoother network transmission. However, although cloud computing has brought upgrades in algorithms and computing power, it cannot provide support for data transmission.

In addition, the early companies that deployed cloud games were more service providers such as live broadcast and video, rather than current technology providers such as Huawei and Baidu. The weakness of the upstream of the industrial chain naturally led to poor results in the downstream. In other words, when the technology is not mature enough, companies are eager to implement it, which is a bit too radical!

But why did cloud gaming suddenly become popular again in 2020?

In fact, this is partly due to the increasing number of companies entering the market and the improvement of the industry ecosystem; on the other hand, it is also due to the rapid development of 5G technology. The former change makes the development of cloud games more balanced and the market more dynamic; while the latter solves various poor experience problems that existed in the application of cloud games in the past.

In December last year, Tencent launched the "5G Ecosystem Plan" and after five months of screening and review, it selected 45 innovative companies to cooperate with them in development, including cloud gaming. At the same time, in March this year, Huawei Cloud also launched the "5G Cloud Gaming Solution 2.0" and cooperated with Sanqi Interactive Entertainment to jointly create its first cloud game...

The entry of domestic cloud computing giants such as Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu, as well as their joint cooperation with game companies, will undoubtedly promote the steady development of cloud gaming, compared to the original single-handed and blind layout of game and live broadcast companies. This is because cloud computing giants have technical advantages, and game and live broadcast companies have user and platform advantages, and the complementary value of both sides is significant.

In terms of technology, since my country launched 5G commercial use last year, the development of 5G technology has made rapid progress recently. The integration of 5G technology and cloud computing has greatly improved the picture clarity and operation fluency of cloud games, and solved the related problems of latency. This further enhances the actual experience of cloud games!

However, it will not be easy for cloud gaming to rise in 2020, because the current industry development still faces problems in market acceptance, technical costs, etc. These are not easy to solve overnight, and companies need to continue to make breakthroughs in technology and carefully manage the market. In the future, I hope to see the day when cloud gaming enters every player!