So far, operators have only been adjacent to gaming, mostly benefiting indirectly from upselling connectivity to gamers. A few operators have tried to build game portals and become gaming service providers, but with limited success because of competition from app stores, consoles and online distributors, and the role of operators was confined to that of connectivity provider, mainly relevant for downloading titles, updates and online multiplayer gaming.
The next generation of gaming services enabled by 5G relies on cloud-based content delivery and consumption, which unlike traditional (or local) video gaming, focuses a significant share of service user experience and QoS optimisation on connectivity. Operators’ assets are central to the success of cloud-based gaming because the activity requires consistent high-speed and low-latency assurance for the duration of the service provision. High-performance broadband, both fixed and mobile, and cloud gaming services complement each other, but also edge cloud and network management capabilities will be key to their success.
This technology allows consumers to access the gaming experience without needing expensive hardware and titles; it reduces the price barrier to entry by enabling subscription-based and on-demand consumption rather than requiring an expensive pay-upfront-to-play distribution model. In addition, it enables the development of complex games that can be played on devices with scarce computational resources, such as smart glasses and the new generation of mobile connected handsets and wearables. Indeed, mobile XR gaming will rely on cloud resources to handle all or most of the software heavy-lifting.
In the mobile gaming market, operators should focus on cloud gaming and XR gaming because their assets are central to these services and because they are well positioned to be cloud-based gaming-on-demand service providers to their subscriber base (and consumers in general) in the same way they are with subscription and transactional video and music services.