In 2021, cloud gaming revenue is expected to be over $1 billion for the first time
Bridge Alliance, which is made up of operators and their customers in the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, announced that two alliance members, SK Telecom and SingTel, have successfully completed the first phase of a proof-of-concept involving the carriers’ multi-access edge computing (MEC) platforms.
MEC supports various ultra-low latency applications including drones, automated guided vehicles and mixed reality, but in the case of this POC, the carriers demonstrated cloud gaming on their MEC platforms deployed through the Bridge Alliance Federated Edge Hub, validating the platforms’ ability to host and deliver edge compute resources across multiple geographies to support low latency applications.
Cloud gaming is a particularly attractive use case for 5G as it continues to grow in popularity. In fact, the revenue outlook for cloud gaming in 2021 is expected to be over $1 billion for the first time, about double what it was raking in last year, according to research conducted by Safe Betting Sites. But, Omdia thinks cloud gaming revenue will grow even more than that, hitting $4 billion in 2021, and then tripling to $12 billion by 2025.
In a press statement, SingTel’s VP of enterprise Mobility Product and Platform Dennis Wong supported these statistics: “Cloud gaming has seen a boom during the pandemic and continues to grow in popularity as digital entertainment for our customers in the region. The POC paves the way for Singtel and our Bridge Alliance partners to deliver immersive, multi-player cloud gaming experiences through our respective 5G and MEC.”
For the demonstration, SKT streamed an online game, World of Warships, through the game streaming provider GameGrid. GameGrid was deployed on the Singtel MEC platform and the cloud gaming experience was tested on a smartphone using Singtel’s 5G Standalone network.
“With the fragmented nature of the Asia-Pacific market, cross-country edge cloud use cases can be best deployed with a Federated Edge Hub,” Dr. Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance said. “By working with our ecosystem of member operators and partners, we empower enterprises, partners and edge compute developers to easily enable resource ordering across multiple geographies through standardized interfaces such as ETSI and TM Forum, and also deploy use cases, with high performance and low latency.”
SKT has been serious about establishing cooperation around the development of MEC platforms and capabilities and last year, set up “Global MEC TF” in Asia to share and co-develop 5G-based MEC technologies with other operators. Currently, “Global MEC TF” includes SKT, SingTel, Taiwan Mobile, Globe Telecom in the Philippines, Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) and PCCW Global in Hong Kong, all of which are members of the Bridge Alliance.
